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"TREE OF FAILURE"

 

By Brian Lynch"

 Updated and revised

 This is a commentary on the David Brooks essay linked here

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14brooks.html

  

David Brooks has always seemed conversant. He has had a regular gig on the "News Hour"  was for years in a "civil" setting with Mark Shields (1937-2022) another civil man. The conversation now continues with other co-contributors. They had a civil conversation. It is and was not about winning but exploring ideas for a few minutes. 

 

 "So this is where civility comes from — from a sense of personal modesty and the ensuing gratitude for the political process. Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation. They are useless without the conversation." Brooks

 

 Brooks's essay is a commentary on a speech President Obama gave in Tucson in 2011 at a memorial after the mass shooting that involved U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords. 

I first say that when I listened to Obama's speech I was pleased and shamed.

 I was shamed for a short while because before the speech I had jumped on the bash the Sara Palin bandwagon. She had a few months earlier been associated with an ad that put several congressmen in the crosshairs of a target. One of those was Congresswomen Giffords. 

From the first lines of the President's speech, he set a tone that raised the bar. I came back to work and had conversations about it. That said it is also important to point out we too need not have the language of "hunting" and killing in our political speech or business. Witness the man arrested at the town meeting telling the "Tea Party" member "your dead." Of course, this was and is a mental health issue.

 

 But I protest to myself a bit in a "conversation" with myself. Is it so simple? In the ensuing days, the conversation in the media was somewhat civil and rational and brought in discussion of the mental health issue and the insanity of the system and how those in psychotic states get bantered about the system and usually will end up in jail often with felony counts. This conversation was introduced firsthand to me, through direct experience, when it was first happening, years ago, when the hospitals were being emptied and the community health centers were not being built and were not being funded. Not a political issue? And therefore not directly or indirectly related to the shooting? I think not. There is a direct cause and effect. Things do come home to roost. 

 

 There was mention of that the danger of the "self-esteem" movement is that I come to think that I am the center of the universe and that I should not have any bad feelings at all. Can there be too many trophies given out? 

These ideas apply more to those of us who should be capable of "conversing" and fixing the problems and helping the psychotics, than those not capable of conversing at least much of the time as many of those do need many trophies because they are often where are because they have been destroyed by shaming and humiliation. But for those of us, capable, Brooks’ point is well taken when he says "The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves." 

 

 I see this too in the larger society. This is the irony and the conundrum of the "rights" movement and I have often expressed it as such. Everyone is "equal." Unfortunately, everyone becomes equal in all ways. So why would anyone have anything to say to anyone? Everyone is right in their way and beautiful as the song says. Give me my space and I'll give you yours. Just leave me alone. No discussion. I can't risk the humiliation. 

 

 As a physician, one that de facto has to be in a position of "power" from time to time, I like many here, have had to suffer through many embarrassing situations of being told that someone is just as "equal" as themselves or at least insinuated that they where equal to me; a janitor, "housekeeping", an administrator tells you would you please (or and your lucky to have the politeness thrown in there) vacate the room now, tell them exactly when you will be done, finish your work in thirty minutes or whatever when in fact you are engaged entirely in patient-centered care. I have essentially been fired on the word of the janitor. I had asked the janitor to please come back when my group was done as he was mopping under and around the conference table as the group was going on. 

I make clear yes everyone is absolutely equal in that they have a common set of human needs and rights. We can not, however, all fly the plane.

 

 I am too not sure that calling us to and reminding us of our "sinfulness", as Brooks does, is an answer. Brooks: "But over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their sinfulness. Children are raised amid a chorus of applause. Politics has become less about institutional restraint and more about giving voters whatever they want at that second. Joe DiMaggio didn’t ostentatiously admire his home runs, but now athletes routinely celebrate themselves as part of the self-branding process."

 

 Yes, I agree with the overall sentiment. And that is again I think the idea of looking out to the community to a "conversation" but I do cringe at "sinfulness." This is what I think we do not want. Brooks is struggling due to a lack of vocabulary to go "back in the day when." Except I and I think we all get queasy or should when we talk about a "wished for day"? A wished for day of "conversation?" When and where exactly was that? Yes, there were times of greater bipartisanism of the great backroom deal of great conversation. And I suppose you can say that is what helped start bringing us out of segregation, and sexism and gave us social reforms. 

 

 But of course, conversation of yore did not precisely include all. Ted and Orin were able to reach across the aisle in the greatest deliberative body. We can only hope it will continue to be that and I suspect there is no reason to believe that other odd pairings will not materialize. The challenge is that the tent is now big, the reforms now made, and the positions taken. Can we risk the humiliation and leave "Everyone is right in their way and beautiful as the song says. Give me my space and I'll give you yours. Just leave me alone. No discussion." behind? I think this challenge to be true on all levels no matter even our understanding of affect.

 Edit: This was written in 2011. Things have not gotten better by any means.

We have to even be careful, unfortunately, of what we mean and how we carry out "conversation." I went well out of my way to steep myself in the tradition of education vis-a-vis what anyone might call "civil conversation" and have found it to be the refuge for many of those who wish to "cogitate." The elite or those by nature that are engaged in the life of the mind as an avoidance and not an engagement of the world. Certainly not all, of course, but it is no news to anyone here that one might say the problem of all education is an almost complete lack of education in emotional intelligence. So that students can be highly educated in the "art of "logic" and 'the art of conversation'" for four years and come out emotional cripples or at least no better off than when they entered. 

 

 Online encounters with my alumni community proved later to show that four years of formal education in "conversation" ( and indeed this being the centerpiece of the school) seemed to have caused no effect on their basic "true" affective/emotional makeup. Online those years of civility instantly disappeared. At a alumni gathering a "prospective" parent who was a psychiatrist shied away from me when I pushed the idea that schools should deal with emotional health and education. "Oh no they have enough to deal with!" 

So a conversation, I suppose, you have to start somewhere.

Some quotes from the Brooks article:

Every sensible person involved in politics and public life knows that their work is laced with failure. Every column, every speech, every piece of legislation and every executive decision has its own humiliating shortcomings. There are always arguments you should have made better, implications you should have anticipated, other points of view you should have taken on board.

Moreover, even if you are at your best, your efforts will still be laced with failure. The truth is fragmentary and it’s impossible to capture all of it. There are competing goods that can never be fully reconciled. The world is more complicated than any human intelligence can comprehend.

But every sensible person in public life also feels redeemed by others. You may write a mediocre column or make a mediocre speech or propose a mediocre piece of legislation, but others argue with you, correct you and introduce elements you never thought of. Each of these efforts may also be flawed, but together, if the system is working well, they move things gradually forward.

Each individual step may be imbalanced, but in succession they make the social organism better.

As a result, every sensible person feels a sense of gratitude for this process. We all get to live lives better than we deserve because our individual shortcomings are transmuted into communal improvement. We find meaning — and can only find meaning — in the role we play in that larger social enterprise.