Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Saying I Love You

“…you shouldn’t blow the chance
When you’ve got the chance to say
I love you…”


Olivia Newton John

There are 2 people to whom I say I Love You daily. There are 2 others to whom I say it almost daily. There are 3 cats and a dog who hear it from me several times a day. There are 7.68 billion people to whom I never say it at all.

I don’t recall the last time I said it in a romantic sense. It’s almost certainly been a decade. It’s been at least that long since I’ve heard anyone say it to me in that way. I wouldn’t be surprised if I never say it or hear it that way again. Nor would I be unhappy about that. It’s gone badly for me in almost all cases. I can be done with that now.

Why do I say it and hear it so rarely?

Let’s begin with what I believe I Love You means. For me, to love someone means that their happiness is at least as important to you as your own. It means you will, whenever possible, act in ways designed to increase that person’s happiness.

Now, it’s absurd to think I could feel that way about 7.68 billion people. I will never see, let alone meet, well over 99% of them. How can their happiness really be at least as important to me as mine? In any meaningful way, it can’t.

But what can I feel about the rest of the humans who share this planet with me? I would prefer none of them suffered. I would prefer that they all practice and receive Kindness. To a greater or lesser extent, I can empathize with them. Whether it’s an impoverished mother from a tiny tribe in Africa, or the richest woman in a high rise in Manhattan, no mother wants her baby taken away without her consent. I can imagine how that must feel. It’s basic to being human. Their experiences are different from mine, but there are certain aspects of life that we all share. Our hearts all, I suspect, feel joy and pain about many of the same experiences. We are more alike than we are different.

But do I love them?

I don’t think I do in the deepest sense of that word. But I recognize that their happiness is, if not necessarily to me, as important as mine, as yours, as anyone’s, at least to them. I hope others love them too. There’s no reason you, or the person next to you, or someone who has never seen a cell phone deserves less from life than I do. So, while I might not love them, individually, I love their existence.

I find I enjoy being able to say I Love You. It makes me feel good. Perhaps that’s because I can empathize with the person to whom I’m saying it. I like to believe hearing or reading it makes that person happy. It may make me feel good because I can feel the reflection of their happiness. Or, maybe it’s just that I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy pastrami. I don’t get enough of that, either, anymore.

I loved my Father deeply. But, I think I can count on one hand the times, after my childhood, that we said it to each other. We didn’t need to say it; it was always clear to us both. He is gone now; our love continues unabated.

It isn’t necessarily clear, however, to the rest of the planet that I love their existence. Either you or I may be gone tomorrow, too. That makes today the ideal time.

I probably don’t know you. I’ll almost certainly never meet you. And if I do know you, we’re probably not in the habit of saying it to one another. (There are, as you know, only about 4 people out of the 7.68 billion running around, with whom I regularly exchange that phrase.) So, let me say what I can.

I love your existence. It’s at least as important to me as my own. I do my best to act in ways designed to increase your happiness. And, if you are nothing more than your existence, as some would posit, then I suppose it would be fair for me to say, in a very general way:

I Love You.

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Civility or Civil War

Civility or Civil War

We live in an increasingly divided country. This is the inevitable result of growing as rapidly as America has. As of December, 2018, the Census Bureau tells me we have 329.1 million people living in the United States. When I was born, in 1962, there were only 186.54 million of us here. In my short lifetime, our population has increased by more than 75%. There’s no evidence of our growth slowing at all.

So, it’s not surprising that we have more disagreements. The more people there are, the more cause we have to disagree.

When I was born there was no discussion about transgender rights. There was no debate about gay rights. There was little concern about Muslims. Welfare was just beginning to transform. And the idea that black people should have equal rights was just beginning to form, at all, at least on the national stage. Abortion was unsafe and illegal. Health insurance was still in its infancy. There were fewer bankruptcies due to health costs in the 1960s than there are now. Health care, however, is substantially better now than it was then. There was little, if any, debate about a Wall. But all of these things, and many others, have become cause for disagreements in the past few decades.

I don’t pretend to know the answers to these questions. I’m not even entirely confident in my ability to formulate the questions presented by these concerns intelligently. But I feel sure the only way we will be able to solve any of the problems that are inherent in a large society is to discuss them. The objective of the discussion, though, can’t be just to win. The objective must be to find solutions.

This requires getting others to see things from our perspective. But it also means learning to see things from the perspectives of others. If I understand not only what a person thinks or feels, but why that person thinks or feels that way, I gain both the advantage of the possibility of my own perspective changing, and the opportunity to address the deeper issues that cause the disagreement in the first place. My mind can change. And I now have a better chance of changing the mind of another person.

The answer may sometimes be to compromise. But it can’t always be. There are places where we must refuse simply to agree to disagree. There are many causes for compromise to be impossible. If I’m unwilling to tolerate any genocide, then I can’t compromise and say, “You want to exterminate 6 million people. I want you to kill 0. So, we’ll split the difference and agree that you can murder 3 million people.”

If, however, I can understand why this leader intends to commit genocide, I can determine whether a solution can be reached. If it’s simply that the leader gets joy from killing, then he’s just an evil bastard, and nothing can be done. Military action is required.

I’m reminded, though, of Kodos, The Executioner from the classic Star Trek episode, “The Conscience of The King.” He was the Governor of a planet with 8,000 residents, and their food supply went bad. Instead of allowing all 8,000 to starve, he ordered the execution of 4,000, so the remainder could survive on the food that was left. I don’t think he was inherently evil. I think he was in an untenable situation. The problem could have been solved without bloodshed if food could have been gotten.

In order to reach solutions, we need to understand not only the problems, but their causes, and the motivations of those who disagree with us.

This cannot be achieved, however, if we don’t behave in civil ways. Why?

The moment a conservative calls me a “Libtard” I’m done listening to him. He’s not interested in solving problems. He’s interested in schoolyard name calling. The epithet does nothing to advance his argument, and he has now shut down the chance that I’m going to gain the understanding necessary to change my mind.

If I tell someone they’re stupid, I’m wildly unlikely to change their minds. They have no more reason to listen to me, and I have shut down my own opportunity.

If we’re going to solve problems, we need to discuss them in civil ways. We need to address ideas, and not people. We need to think clearly, and do our best to make sure the arguments we offer are logically sound. We must not be persuaded by fallacious arguments or unconsidered ideology. We have to guard against Confirmation Bias, or the problem of believing what we want to believe without scrutinizing it as carefully as what we dislike. But most of all, we need to understand one another. And civility is a first step toward that understanding.

With our country and our world growing at a dizzying pace, it becomes urgent that we begin to solve some of our problems now, before the ever deepening divides finally tear us apart, and we find ourselves at war. While you and I can’t change the world, we can change our portions of it. If we begin with Civility, perhaps we don’t have to end in Civil War.

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Empathy and Art

Empathy and Art

My earliest memory of feeling empathy is Christmas 1969. I was 7 years old, sitting under a tree with an obscene number of gifts I had just opened, and feeling truly ecstatic, when I noticed my Mother had no Christmas presents. Not one. I burst into tears of guilt. My father took me to a drug store, and we found Mom a candle, and it was my first present to her. Neither Dad nor I had any ability to wrap a candle, so we gave it to Mom to wrap. And when she opened it an hour or so later, she loved that candle as she loved her children. She got candles from me for decades after that, and for nearly every occasion. It took several additional hours for me to recognize that Dad hadn’t gotten any presents, either, and Mom took me to the drug store to buy Dad a pipe. I gave him most of the pipes he used to smoke. These Traditions were the product of Empathy.

I have, and I would guess most of you have, wept for Tom Robinson. I have cheered for Sherlock Holmes. I have spoken with Hamlet repeatedly about the value and meaning (or lack thereof) of life. I have felt joy for Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars. I learned Friendship from Sam and Frodo, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. I learned courage from Santiago and his marlin, and morality from Atticus Finch. I have faced George’s agonizing moral dilemma concerning his best friend, Lenny, when George tells him to think about the rabbits. These are all other examples of Empathy.

I believe Empathy is essential to being human. Too much Empathy is dangerous, of course. You can’t possibly grieve for every tragedy in the world. No one has that vast an emotional landscape. But, the inability to feel for others is, in my mind, the root of evil. You don’t kill people not because it’s against the law, but because you can feel for someone besides yourself. You won’t commit most acts of violence or cruelty for the same reasons. You can imagine how you would feel if it happened to you. You can’t do something you believe to be evil because you can experience the emotions of Others.

I believe an exposure to The Arts is essential for increasing a person’s Empathy. It’s in books, movies, music, paintings, poetry, dance, and other forms of Art that we find our own feelings. And it’s where we learn to feel the joys and pains that our fellow travelers on this little ball in space are likely to feel, themselves. It’s in catharsis that we learn the most about ourselves and each other.

When we can understand each other, we can dispense with the idea of Us vs. Them. We can move forward together, as a species, and this is a product of Empathy. I care about you because I recognize some of myself in you. I hope you can see some of yourself in me, too.

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

The Dilemma of Us vs. Them

I am human; so are all of you. At this point, everything else, sadly, becomes exclusionary.

I’m male. More than half of you are not.

I’m white. Again, more than half of you are not.

I’m straight. I don’t have the statistics but certainly many of you are not.

I’m an Atheist. The vast majority of you are not.

I’m more than half a century old. I’ve eliminated another large group of you.

I’m an American citizen, and we can break that category down even further. I’m also a Democrat, a Liberal, and a member of the Lower Class. There are even fewer of you left in my particular box.

So, my basic group of “Us” includes very few of the people I probably like most. I see no advantages to belonging to any groups beyond being human, if it means the exclusion of others.

What are the benefits of separating ourselves from others? Why would we do it? If there were no advantages, I feel sure no one would bother.

I’m not a sociologist. But, in the minuscule research I did, I found that sociologists believe that the advantage of associating with those who match our categories is that we advance in life by being around people that fit our labels. This can be our social class, our gender, the opposite gender, financial status, and any number of equally arbitrary, and, I believe, meaningless categories. And while I agree this is probably true from the sense of one’s career, it seems to me to limit one’s experiences unnecessarily.

Many of you fit few of the same labels I do. Does that mean that I can learn nothing from you? Does that mean we can’t understand one another? Does that make me worthless to you? I believe the answer to all those questions is No.

Your experiences have been distinctly different from mine. When I learn about them, I can understand you a little better. If I can understand you a little better, I can also understand all human beings just a little better. You’ve added to my experiences, and I learned something from you. And, finally, it helps me understand myself a little better.

We probably speak the same language. You can understand what I’m writing. There’s a good chance I can understand what you’re writing. We are very different in many ways, I’m sure. But we can communicate. And from that, we can reach the beginning of an understanding of one another.

If I am of no value to you, it’s a good guess you wouldn’t have read this far. We can have value to one another without ever meeting, or even speaking. I don’t know what my value to you may be, but your value to me is, if nothing else, that my thoughts are being considered by another consciousness. That’s an exhilarating feeling.

I’m not interested in excluding anyone from my life based on a category. If you’re an asshole, that’s one thing. But assholes show up in all categories. It’s not your category differences that bother me; it’s simply that you’re an asshole. I can learn from you anyway, but I probably don’t want to hang out with you.

Mozart was, I’m told, a complete asshole. The thing is, I don’t care. I love The Marriage of Figaro, regardless of the details of the personal life of the artist who created it. I just don’t want to have him over for dinner.

For all the ways that we are different, we’re almost certainly more similar. We’re not just all human. If you prick us, we all bleed. We all have hearts that beat. We all eat food. We all need water to live. We all go to the bathroom, or if not, excrete waste in some form or other. We all need oxygen. We’re all living on the same rock in space, all at the very same time. As far as we can tell, we are the only living beings in the universe. We have quite a bit in common.

We gain nothing of actual value by deciding We are good, and They are not. Intelligent decisions are made about individuals, not categories. If I wanted only to have people like me in my life, I would be limited to straight, atheistic, diabetic, old, mostly dead, Star Trek fans who think that Enterprise was better than it got credit for being, and all the post TNG movies are pure crap. I don’t believe I have a single reader left in my category. I’m doomed to solitude. What a bummer for me.

If, however, now that I live in an age of international communication, and in a deeply connected world, I can have a greater diversity of people in my life, and I can, I hope, learn from whatever it is that you share with me, or with the world in general, then my life is richer for the experience. Is that selfish? Yes, I suppose it is, but that’s the subject of another essay.

If we can agree to this simple proposition, I believe the world would be a better place:

There is no Them. We are all Us.


Imagine all the people sharing all the world,
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

John Lennon
Posted on by Fred

Eye on the Wall

Eye on The Wall

I’ve lived here for 8 months, and today, just now, is the first time I’ve noticed this. It’s on the outside of my back door.

One has to wonder who drew it. Was it drawn? Did the dirt randomly manage to arrange itself in that shape?

Who tried to clean it off the wall? Why did they do that? I can imagine a teenager drawing it, his mother seeing it and telling him to clean it up. His half-hearted effort left what you see.

And how did I go eight months without ever noticing it? What made me notice it today?

Interestingly, I was reflecting at that moment on the fact that I can be insensitive sometimes. I made someone uncomfortable this week without ever thinking about that aspect of what I was doing. I don’t like that about myself, and it’s something I need to change. I’m working on it. I’ve apologized, of course, and I’ve taken the necessary steps to undo, as much as possible, the damage I did. That seems to me to be the right thing to do.

Other people’s feelings matter just as much as mine do. And, if I don’t think something through far enough, I am likely to cause consequences that are predictable, but I didn’t bother to see. Sometimes, I have to admit, it’s because I don’t WANT to see them. I want to do whatever I want, and the idea of something getting in the way is one I don’t generally entertain. I need to ask myself a few more questions before I act, I suspect.

So, I was thinking about all that while having a cigarette in the back yard. And I got up to come in.

And then I found myself looking at what appears to be a clouded eye drawn on the wall by the door. I must have looked at that spot a thousand times in the last 8 months, but I didn’t observe.

Now, I’m the first to shout that correlation isn’t necessarily causation, and I am keeping that firmly in mind today. But, having said that, I wonder if there is a connection between what we perceive, and what we’re thinking. Was I seeing an eye because I had been introspecting?

What if it’s not an eye? It could be a fish. If that’s the case, the whole thing falls apart. It’s still interesting, I guess, but I have to go a long way to find a fish metaphor that goes anywhere. I perceived an eye, and probably because that’s what my mind needed me to see at that moment.

Nevertheless, there is something to be said for human perception. I like the things I’m perceiving, even if those things are flaws. If I can fix them, I can be a better man. And, isn’t that, finally, what we should all try to be?

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

The Value of a Person

The Value of a Person

My value is not defined by how much money I can earn. Neither, for me at least, is yours. Such a definition is not only narrow, in that it focuses on only one small part of the thousands of elements of my existence, it is also among the least interesting. Can I make you laugh? Can I cause you to smile? Can I make you think? Can I entertain you? Am I someone to whom you might reasonably turn for love and kindness? Do I know as much about Star Trek as you do? Did “Go Set A Watchman” ruin “To Kill a Mockingbird” for me? Do I believe that’s even a relevant question? Would a comma straighten out your sentence for you? I’m the Guy to Ask. All of those are more interesting definitions of your friend. They’re also all among the indicators of Your Value to Me.

Many of the people on my Friends List are women upon whom, when I was in The Hormone Haze that is the existence of a 15 year old boy, I had a terrible crush. Was that because they were physically attractive? Undoubtedly. So should I make all of my judgments about women based upon their attractiveness? And, if I did, wouldn’t you loathe me for such an unimportant and single minded appraisal of my friends? And if anyone made their sole method of judging me my physical attractiveness, I would have few friends, indeed. It’s simply one of the thousand elements of them in which I once had an interest.

Their real value to me, now that I’m no longer a boy, lies in their ideas. It has to do with how they see the world. It’s what I learn from seeing glimpses into their worlds. They’re like Elizabeth Bennet for me. I never lived in 18th Century England. But I’ve seen it from her eyes, and it enriches my understanding of, and to, my own world. And, if you don’t love Elizabeth Bennet, I beseech you, now that you’re an adult, to read “Pride and Prejudice.” If you still don’t love Lizzy, I need to understand you better.

Just as wrong as I would be to make my judgment of a person based on their physical attributes, I would be equally offended if I were to be judged solely on the amount of money I can earn. This would be equally true if I were physically attractive or I could earn large sums of money. Why, then, are we willing to make such narrow judgments about strangers? I refuse to believe the only value of someone else is how much money they can earn, or how physically attractive that person may be.

And I believe all people, simply because they have been born, deserve the basics of living. I know many people who publish memes of blank pieces of paper that are the list of all the things the world owes you. I can’t agree with that.

Neither you nor I nor any of them ever asked to be born. We simply were. We were the fastest sperm, but we didn’t even ask to be that. And we survive on this planet only because others, at some point, took care of us. In fact, we all rely on each other, in greater or lesser ways, to survive even now. Someone has to grow our food. Someone has to pick it, or slaughter it. Someone has to package it. Someone has to ship it. Someone has to stock it on the shelf. Someone has to sell it to you. And that was just lunch. We depend on each other. Is that Socialism? I don’t know. We can debate economic theories another time. I’m simply pointing out that, as John Donne told us, “No man is an island entire of itself.”

Yes, we all live in our own worlds. Our experiences are ours alone, unique to each of us. But we also all live in the same world. We share it. There is no other to which we can go. This planet is all there is for any of us.

Let’s make it as nice for everyone as we can. Let’s not decide that some of us are better than others for reasons that have nothing to do with who we are. If you’re a serial killer, I’m probably a better person than you are. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a better person than I am; otherwise I wouldn’t want you on my Friends List. I improve myself by being around those better than I am, in the same way you’ll become a better musician by playing with Miles Davis than you will by playing with me. Some people are better than others, yes. But let’s make those judgments about them for meaningful reasons. And let’s end those judgments at the point of deciding whether we want to be their friends, instead of deciding that, because we don’t like someone very well, they don’t deserve the basics of life. Yes, they do. So do I. So do you.

Posted on by Fred · 4 Comments

The Spiral of Poverty

“I’ve seen the bottom, and I’ve been on top, but mostly I’ve lived in between…”

Dan Fogelberg

It’s easy to blame the victims of poverty for their state. They’re lazy. They don’t manage money well enough. They should get a better job. Those things can be true. Some of them are true of my poverty.

Sometimes it’s something else.

They get laid off. They retire. They change jobs. They have massive bills they hadn’t anticipated. Their health declines. Any of these can cause poverty. And they are, by no means, the only causes. The causes are as numerous and varied as its victims.

My own poverty is nowhere near as bad as that of most others. I have been fortunate in that I have never had to go without a home. I have never gone without food. I have always managed (even if only barely) to keep myself in the insulin I need in order to survive.

But since I can speak only for myself, I will use my own experiences to explain the spiraling effects of poverty.

I quit teaching in 2016 because I couldn’t do it anymore. I had begun to hate myself because I thought that teaching students that reading is boring was immoral. And thus began my self contempt.

Students whose eyes had once lit up with joy to start the next Sherlock Holmes story, to hear more of Shakespeare, to see if Rainsford could escape from General Zaroff, to see if Santiago could get his marlin back to shore, became students whose eyes glazed over with torpor when we had to do “Close Readings” of empty and soulless works. They soon discovered the only reason to read is to pass a mindless test on a computer.

I fought against it. My principal gave me horrible evaluations because I wasn’t a “team player.” I wasn’t tracking data. I wasn’t updating the My Learning Plan website with “artifacts” to prove that I’m good. I was too busy trying to sneak in something to spark their imaginations. By my final year, all literature had all been banned from my classroom.

Near the end of my career, I was borrowing money from places with neon signs just to make rent. I was working two jobs, and I had even found some roommates in order to reduce my expenses, but it just wasn’t possible to keep up. Why? Teachers make good money, don’t they? Uh… no. And that actually was the beginning of my spiraling poverty.

In 2005, my second marriage, in Maine, where they pay teachers well, fell apart. My father was getting old, and I knew he wasn’t going to be around much longer. I came back to Arizona to be with him while I could. And I took a cut of roughly $12,000 a year to do that.

Was that the right decision? I believe it was. You can, however, tell me that my poverty was, then, my fault. I should have stayed in Maine where they paid me a better wage. You may be right.

When I quit in 2016, I pulled the only retirement I had left, (I lost half of it in each of my two divorces) paid off the neon sign places, and I lived, briefly, the life I had always wanted to live. I went several times to California to meet one of my heroes and see him perform. I took Mom there a couple of times. I wrote a screenplay. I made videos. I slept. My depression was kept at bay, and I looked forward to each new day. My contempt for myself, now that I wasn’t doing anything I considered to be immoral, was lessening.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Fred. You should have saved that money.” That may be true. On the other hand, though I live in poverty now, I have memories of beautiful experiences I wasn’t going to have any other way. No one can take that joy away from me.

But once you’re in poverty it spirals.

You get sick and miss work, so your paycheck is short. You have to make choices about what to skip paying. If it’s your car payment, you save some money this month, but next month, you need to find twice as much, and, of course, you have to pay the penalties. Next month, your problem is twice as bad. Your budget fits one car payment, not two. So then they repossess your car.

You don’t want to lose it again, so now you have to buy the cheapest functional car you can. And you have to get it to pass emissions, which, because the car is so old, you can do only if you know a guy who knows a guy who can get the check engine light off long enough to get the guy he knows at Emissions Testing to look the other way. What is normally a $17 bill goes to $117. It’s the price of poverty.

It spirals.

And now you begin to think of yourself as being worthless. You are beneath contempt because all too often you’re begging for help. You beg from friends, from the government, from charities, and from churches. And you hate yourself for that. It’s not what a person, particularly a man in our society, is supposed to do. And your friends are kind, and the government can be helpful if you can jump through all the right hoops, and charities and churches can be nice, too. But, inside, you feel as though what you are doing is no way to live. You spent your life giving. Now you spend it taking. And that’s contemptible.

As I said, it spirals.

So, when you see someone in poverty, you don’t need to give them your sympathy or your money. But you also should try to avoid giving them your contempt. Trust me, they have plenty of that for themselves. And it’s not what any of them want.