This is an updated version that better characterizes my relationship with my first wife Kay. She felt I portrayed us as more serious than we were—and she had a point.
--Ed
There’s a lot of losing going on this holiday season. Loss of wealth. Loss of jobs. Loss of life. I have little stories that go with those big ones. My retirement savings has cratered with everyone else’s. One of my best friends lost his job and I’m worried about losing mine as a business journalist. My grandmother-in-law died just before Thanksgiving, a relatively peaceful death but still a painful one.
Amid these losses, though, I’m finding myself gaining. Or perhaps better said, regaining. In recent weeks, hope and idealism that had quietly ebbed in me over the years washed back. I am feeling once again a fundamental faith that we can and must comfort each other. And an essay I read about the importance of teasing jolted me back to the deliciousness of romantic ribbing and led to a wiser take on playfulness.
These positive personal tales also fit into some bigger, public ones. For many of us, it seems, tis’ the season to be both melancholy and jolly.
***
My gift of newfound optimism has to do with the big O. The big win of the big O, really. Because if Barack Obama had lost Nov. 4, I would probably be feeling pessimistic big-time right about now.
Like some other liberals, in the days before the election, I was paranoid Obama’s lead in the polls would somehow disappear and our team would fail. This fear of faltering in the fourth quarter, in the clutch, runs deep in me. Not only have I failed to decisively win any organized sports championships in my life, but I hail from Buffalo. The city where the Buffalo Bills hold the dubious honor of being the only professional football team to make it to the Super Bowl championship four straight years only to lose each time.
I tried to compensate during this year’s election with effort. I made more than 500 phone calls from my home for Obama. I spent a Saturday with my friend Monique in Nevada, amid llama farms and lots of angry dogs, asking voters in the swing state to back Barack. The last days before Nov. 4, I campaigned for Obama at his downtown San Francisco headquarters. Many of my 11th-hour calls were to voters in Florida. The state I’d spent hours calling for the doomed Kerry campaign. Where the Dems came up short in 2000.
I secretly worried I was cursing Obama’s chances even as I dialed for voters.
But he won. And that win suddenly made concepts like hope and community and sacrifice real again, grippable—like the way Oprah Winfrey apparently just grabbed and held onto a stranger at the victory celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. Obama really won. By a lot. Americans not only were willing to put a legacy of racism aside, but cast their lot for the man and the party saying “yes we can.”
A night or two after the election, I suddenly made the connection that Obama’s mantra is the same as the morning chant at my son’s elementary school. Grattan Principal Jean Robertson starts each day by assembling all the students on the playground, sharing announcements and then asking the kids, “What’d you come to school for today?” Students, teachers and parents answer, “To Learn.” And Jean shouts back, “Can you do it?” And about 350 voices belt out: “Yes we can!”
In the weeks since school began for my kindergartener, I’d appreciated the morning call and response as a nice, motivating ritual. But now I saw the richness of this every-day articulation of hope and determination, its elevation of a collective, ambitious philosophy. It dawned on me that the kids could have said “Yes I can.” The Grattan go-get-‘em pep talk was not just sweet but bordering on sacred.
Of course, Grattan isn’t perfect. My wife and I have already butted up against bureaucracy and questioned some of the school decisions. But something democratic and deeply hopeful is alive at this little school, which has attracted growing numbers of families in recent years. Grattan prides itself in part on the Grattan Way, a four-part code of respectfulness, responsibility, safety and kindness.
I now find myself having more faith in the good stuff going on at Grattan, and wanting to get more involved in it. The Grattan Way, after all, is my way too—ideals I’ve held since childhood and eventually shaped a political philosophy around.
***
That philosophy—pretty much a traditional liberalism—has taken a beating over the years. Like other liberals, I was stunned that the country could reelect George W. in 2004, even though he’d misled us into the Iraq war and botched that mission terribly.
Not only did I worry that Rove’s “permanent Republican majority” was a real possibility, but my own professional choices over the past two decades have distanced me from my college-era activist bent. Yes, I taught public high school in New York City for four years and interned at both The Nation and The Village Voice. But for the last 13 years I’ve been a journalist writing for the mainstream media or the business press.
That can be a noble pursuit, and I’m proud of a number of investigative articles that I’ve written—stories that may have reached a wider audience than if they’d appeared in a lefty publication.
Still, there’s been a cost to where I’ve hung my byline. It has to do with the “objectivity” demanded by the mainstream media. Despite writing probably upwards of 2,000 articles over the years, I can feel that my voice and--my passions--have been silenced some.
The sense of having been gradually quieted politically and professionally is partly why Obama’s win was such a satisfying present, such a poignant payoff. I kept crying in the wake of the victory. Tuesday night, I pumped my first and hissed out from clenched teeth “We fucking won Florida!”—but did it with my voice breaking. I teared up during the acceptance speech. I wept in the following days at stories of Obama breaking barriers. I choked up as I thought about my mother voting for Obama despite her pro-life position.
There was some serious grief being released here. A store of sadness I was barely conscious of, that I believe came from hope dying to some degree over the years.
The same surprisingly intense crying overtook me when I began dating my wife, and I recognized that I’d settled for a less-than-full level of happiness in my first marriage.
You see this overwhelm turn athletes to mush when they reach the top after a long journey. Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics was a seven foot-tall baby after winning the National Basketball Championship earlier this year, rocking and crying and shouting, “anything’s possible!”
Maybe it takes tears to clean off dusty but dearly help dreams—whether they be of a basketball title or a big love or a better world.
Because apart from making weepy, Obama’s win has awakened my political passions. I feel inspired to take on projects like creating a more just economy, tackling the violence and poverty of my own neighborhood, and staving off climate disaster.
I don’t think I’m alone. I’m sure most McCain voters aren’t nearly as pumped up as I am, but I suspect many agreed with McCain himself who said in his concession speech that Obama’s election says something great about America. And many McCain-Palin people may have been stirred when Obama called on all of us to get ready to pitch in during his acceptance speech.
In fact, even though Obama got less than 55 percent of the popular vote, a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll indicates that 79 percent of the public thinks he will do a good job as president.
Those who voted for Obama, meanwhile, feel shaken, not stirred, and in the best way possible. Election night, throngs of people in multiple American cities including San Francisco erupted in spontaneous street parties. My wife and I celebrated with champagne, leaning out our window to join in the cries of “woo hoo”, “yeah!” and a more primal “HAHHHH!”
Those yells weren’t just about relief, joy and silliness. On some level we were restating a serious resolve. We were shouting “Yes We Can.”
***
It’s tempting to call that phrase an empty slogan. A recent profile of leftist author Naomi Klein in the New Yorker quotes Klein along these lines, as she points to more conservative Obama stances on issues including war in Afghanistan.
But to minimize the motto ignores how powerful it is to highlight the social over the individual for a change. Talk about the change we need--virtually all the ills wrought by the Bush Administration stem from prizing the individual at the expense of the group. The cowboy foreign policy in Iraq. The you’re-on-your-own economic policies that widened the wealth gap and ignored the perils of unfettered markets. The disregard for future generations or the global community when it comes to the environment.
In fact, reconnecting with the basic idea of collective action is the only way we will get out of the economic crisis upon us. Consumers and businesses are reining in spending and retrenching in ways that may make sense for them individually, but are sending us as a whole into a self-perpetuating spiral of reduced demand and layoffs. It’s the recipe for another Depression.
Thankfully, though, we went through one of those already. And Americans appear to be remembering that people can solve problems together. A study published last year by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found “increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies.”
In other words, there seems to be a yes-we-can spirit in the air.
That spirit was reinforced for me recently in the realm of religion. I have been attending Old First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco for the past few months, and a sermon two Sundays ago by pastor Maggi Henderson reminded me of the spiritual, moral component of community. Henderson spoke about the prophet Isaiah’s words, “’Comfort, O comfort My people,’ says your God.” We often think of comfort as a lack of pain, as in comfortable shoes, Henderson said. But, she said, there’s a more active, communal meaning: the idea that collectively we fortify each other.
Henderson’s sermon was another gift of the season. Her call for a kind of solidarity to transcend tough times gave me a greater appreciation of the well-worn holiday phrase: tidings of comfort and joy. The good news is that we’re stronger together.
***
But there’s more to the comfort-and-joy story. Part of what makes us happy is a little discomfort. I was reminded of this wisdom by a Dec. 7 New York Times essay by psychologist Dacher Keltner titled, “In Defense of Teasing.” It highlighted the way teasing—as opposed to bullying or humiliating—is a key component of pleasure and even human connection.
“Teasing is the stage for the drama of flirtation, where suitors provoke in order to look for the sure signs of enduring commitment.,’ Keltner wrote. “…Studies find that married couples with a rich vocabulary of teasing nicknames and formulaic insults are happier and more satisfied.”
The essay struck me partly because it reminded me of some delightful give-and-take from an old romance. My old girlfriend Marlene once called me “scrawny”, and I think I responded by calling her “skinny” and a chase ensued. The jabs had points—I am a slender dude and she had rail-thin legs. But given the affectionate way we spoke those words, the put-downs acted as cupid arrows. The thrill of that exchange is partly why I still get nostalgic about her.
My first wife Kay called me “scrappy” based on the way I played basketball. It was an affirming description, but it symbolized the way our relationship could err on the side of seriousness. Kay has a clever, dry sense of humor. And we did poke fun of each other a fair amount. But there was a way in which we pulled our playful punches. Our preoccupation with taking care of each other limited the teasing, and that helped crimp the joy I felt with her.
I recaptured a sense of delight with my wife Rowena. When I met her nearly nine years ago, she struck me as a perfect balance of Marlene’s extreme romanticism and Kay’s anti-romantic realism. We also share a playfulness around movement, a hungry curiosity about the world and a sense of wonder about our two kids.
But we haven’t found a groove when it comes to romantic teasing. Often we feel sensitive to each other’s digs. Or maybe we haven’t found a way to deliver them in the right way. Rowena’s got a sarcastic, sometimes raunchy sense of humor. She shared this style with her first husband, though the common ground didn’t ultimately keep them close.
Rowena thinks our senses of humor may never click exactly. She may be right, but I’m not willing to give up yet. I at least can thicken my skin and lighten up more. I’ve long had a “safety first” mantra which can drive my kids batty during rough-housing and get in my own way of having fun. My buddy Joel once called me his “earnest” friend. I cringe a little at the description, which was spot on. Too much safety and seriousness veers into the dull and somber.
***
So I’m grateful to Keltner for refreshing my memory that relationships can be deepened by both heartfelt hugs and light-hearted zingers. But his words offer a still larger contribution. As a society, we should be concerned about going too far when it comes to comforting our brothers and sisters. By seeking a pain-free society, we may create a sterile one.
Economically speaking, I think you can see risk-taking as roughly analogous to a kind of societal teasing. A new business venture amounts to a challenge to established firms. During the past decade, such economic “teasing” was taken to the level of “tricks”. Unscrupulous lenders pushed mortgages on consumers with payments destined to mushroom to unaffordable levels. Largely unregulated financial services firms peddled new, little understood investment products that depended on a housing market bubble.
All the dubious activity enriched a few, but led to an unstable financial system that has required billions in public bail outs and helped send the economy into a deepening recession.
To go to far in the other direction though—to banish risk altogether—would result in an economic system that’s likely to be not only less prosperous but even dull. Through entrepreneurial or investment risk, an individual sticks his neck out from the group, in a sense mocking the more powerful or status quo as inadequate. My friend Art recently observed that the U.S. is the most fascinating country to watch with its booms and busts—we should retain something of that dynamic story.
Preserving a degree of public playfulness is about more than just the economy. There’s been concern that jokes cannot be told about Obama, who can come across as a serious dude. Even amid our crises, we ought not to take ourselves too seriously. It may be more important than ever to be able to laugh. In the hard road ahead, laughter will be a rare luxury.
***
It’s fitting that the economic crisis is coming to a head of sorts in winter. The season of darkness, when we lose light, lose the life of plants, lose the comfort of warmer weather. The holiday rituals are an elaborate effort—not always successful—to pick up our spirits with lights and social gatherings. The best of the holiday music nods to the downerness of the days. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio is a case in point, with the bittersweet “Christmas Time is Here” offsetting more upbeat songs like “Hark, the Herald Angles Sing” and the classic piano rave-up “Linus and Lucy.”
Maybe the truism is right—we need some bad times to bring out our best. We have to face loss to experience the gifts of brotherhood and communal cheer.
In “Christmas Time is Here,” the kids on the recording sing: “Oh that we could always see such spirit through the year.”
That oft-repeated sentiment has a larger significance amid today’s recession. We can’t afford to lose the holiday spirit this year. We need collective hope and compassion and playfulness.
Can we do it, as Jean Robertson might ask? Can we create tidings of comfort and joy out of the current gloom? Even a Grattan kindergartener knows the answer: Yes we can.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Yes we can create tidings of comfort and joy
There’s a lot of losing going on this holiday season. Loss of wealth. Loss of jobs. Loss of life. I have little stories that go with those big ones. My retirement savings has cratered with everyone else’s. One of my best friends lost his job and I’m worried about losing mine as a business journalist. My grandmother-in-law died just before Thanksgiving, a relatively peaceful death but still a painful one.
Amid these losses, though, I’m finding myself gaining. Or perhaps better said, regaining. In recent weeks, hope and idealism that had quietly ebbed in me over the years washed back. I am feeling once again a fundamental faith that we can and must comfort each other. And an essay I read about the importance of teasing jolted me back to the deliciousness of romantic ribbing and led to a wiser take on playfulness.
These positive personal tales also fit into some bigger, public ones. For many of us, it seems, tis’ the season to be both melancholy and jolly.
***
My gift of newfound optimism has to do with the big O. The big win of the big O, really. Because if Barack Obama had lost Nov. 4, I would probably be feeling pessimistic big-time right about now.
Like some other liberals, in the days before the election, I was paranoid Obama’s lead in the polls would somehow disappear and our team would fail. This fear of faltering in the fourth quarter, in the clutch, runs deep in me. Not only have I failed to decisively win any organized sports championships in my life, but I hail from Buffalo. The city where the Buffalo Bills hold the dubious honor of being the only professional football team to make it to the Super Bowl championship four straight years only to lose each time.
I tried to compensate during this year’s election with effort. I made more than 500 phone calls from my home for Obama. I spent a Saturday with my friend Monique in Nevada, amid llama farms and lots of angry dogs, asking voters in the swing state to back Barack. The last days before Nov. 4, I campaigned for Obama at his downtown San Francisco headquarters. Many of my 11th-hour calls were to voters in Florida. The state I’d spent hours calling for the doomed Kerry campaign. Where the Dems came up short in 2000.
I secretly worried I was cursing Obama’s chances even as I dialed for voters.
But he won. And that win suddenly made concepts like hope and community and sacrifice real again, grippable—like the way Oprah Winfrey apparently just grabbed and held onto a stranger at the victory celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. Obama really won. By a lot. Americans not only were willing to put a legacy of racism aside, but cast their lot for the man and the party saying “yes we can.”
A night or two after the election, I suddenly made the connection that Obama’s mantra is the same as the morning chant at my son’s elementary school. Grattan Principal Jean Robertson starts each day by assembling all the students on the playground, sharing announcements and then asking the kids, “What’d you come to school for today?” Students, teachers and parents answer, “To Learn.” And Jean shouts back, “Can you do it?” And about 350 voices belt out: “Yes we can!”
In the weeks since school began for my kindergartener, I’d appreciated the morning call and response as a nice, motivating ritual. But now I saw the richness of this every-day articulation of hope and determination, its elevation of a collective, ambitious philosophy. It dawned on me that the kids could have said “Yes I can.” The Grattan go-get-‘em pep talk was not just sweet but bordering on sacred.
Of course, Grattan isn’t perfect. My wife and I have already butted up against bureaucracy and questioned some of the school decisions. But something democratic and deeply hopeful is alive at this little school, which has attracted growing numbers of families in recent years. Grattan prides itself in part on the Grattan Way, a four-part code of respectfulness, responsibility, safety and kindness.
I now find myself having more faith in the good stuff going on at Grattan, and wanting to get more involved in it. The Grattan Way, after all, is my way too—ideals I’ve held since childhood and eventually shaped a political philosophy around.
***
That philosophy—pretty much a traditional liberalism—has taken a beating over the years. Like other liberals, I was stunned that the country could reelect George W. in 2004, even though he’d misled us into the Iraq war and botched that mission terribly.
Not only did I worry that Rove’s “permanent Republican majority” was a real possibility, but my own professional choices over the past two decades have distanced me from my college-era activist bent. Yes, I taught public high school in New York City for four years and interned at both The Nation and The Village Voice. But for the last 13 years I’ve been a journalist writing for the mainstream media or the business press.
That can be a noble pursuit, and I’m proud of a number of investigative articles that I’ve written—stories that may have reached a wider audience than if they’d appeared in a lefty publication.
Still, there’s been a cost to where I’ve hung my byline. It has to do with the “objectivity” demanded by the mainstream media. Despite writing probably upwards of 2,000 articles over the years, I can feel that my voice and--my passions--have been silenced some.
The sense of having been gradually quieted politically and professionally is partly why Obama’s win was such a satisfying present, such a poignant payoff. I kept crying in the wake of the victory. Tuesday night, I pumped my first and hissed out from clenched teeth “We fucking won Florida!”—but did it with my voice breaking. I teared up during the acceptance speech. I wept in the following days at stories of Obama breaking barriers. I choked up as I thought about my mother voting for Obama despite her pro-life position.
There was some serious grief being released here. A store of sadness I was barely conscious of, that I believe came from hope dying to some degree over the years.
The same surprisingly intense crying overtook me when I began dating my wife, and I recognized that I’d settled for a less-than-full level of happiness in my first marriage.
You see this overwhelm turn athletes to mush when they reach the top after a long journey. Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics was a seven foot-tall baby after winning the National Basketball Championship earlier this year, rocking and crying and shouting, “anything’s possible!”
Maybe it takes tears to clean off dusty but dearly help dreams—whether they be of a basketball title or a big love or a better world.
Because apart from making weepy, Obama’s win has awakened my political passions. I feel inspired to take on projects like creating a more just economy, tackling the violence and poverty of my own neighborhood, and staving off climate disaster.
I don’t think I’m alone. I’m sure most McCain voters aren’t nearly as pumped up as I am, but I suspect many agreed with McCain himself who said in his concession speech that Obama’s election says something great about America. And many McCain-Palin people may have been stirred when Obama called on all of us to get ready to pitch in during his acceptance speech.
In fact, even though Obama got less than 55 percent of the popular vote, a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll indicates that 79 percent of the public thinks he will do a good job as president.
Those who voted for Obama, meanwhile, feel shaken, not stirred, and in the best way possible. Election night, throngs of people in multiple American cities including San Francisco erupted in spontaneous street parties. My wife and I celebrated with champagne, leaning out our window to join in the cries of “woo hoo”, “yeah!” and a more primal “HAHHHH!”
Those yells weren’t just about relief, joy and silliness. On some level we were restating a serious resolve. We were shouting “Yes We Can.”
***
It’s tempting to call that phrase an empty slogan. A recent profile of leftist author Naomi Klein in the New Yorker quotes Klein along these lines, as she points to more conservative Obama stances on issues including war in Afghanistan.
But to minimize the motto ignores how powerful it is to highlight the social over the individual for a change. Talk about the change we need--virtually all the ills wrought by the Bush Administration stem from prizing the individual at the expense of the group. The cowboy foreign policy in Iraq. The you’re-on-your-own economic policies that widened the wealth gap and ignored the perils of unfettered markets. The disregard for future generations or the global community when it comes to the environment.
In fact, reconnecting with the basic idea of collective action is the only way we will get out of the economic crisis upon us. Consumers and businesses are reining in spending and retrenching in ways that may make sense for them individually, but are sending us as a whole into a self-perpetuating spiral of reduced demand and layoffs. It’s the recipe for another Depression.
Thankfully, though, we went through one of those already. And Americans appear to be remembering that people can solve problems together. A study published last year by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found “increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies.”
In other words, there seems to be a yes-we-can spirit in the air.
That spirit was reinforced for me recently in the realm of religion. I have been attending Old First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco for the past few months, and a sermon two Sundays ago by pastor Maggi Henderson reminded me of the spiritual, moral component of community. Henderson spoke about the prophet Isaiah’s words, “’Comfort, O comfort My people,’ says your God.” We often think of comfort as a lack of pain, as in comfortable shoes, Henderson said. But, she said, there’s a more active, communal meaning: the idea that collectively we fortify each other.
Henderson’s sermon was another gift of the season. Her call for a kind of solidarity to transcend tough times gave me a greater appreciation of the well-worn holiday phrase: tidings of comfort and joy. The good news is that we’re stronger together.
***
But there’s more to the comfort-and-joy story. Part of what makes us happy is a little discomfort. I was reminded of this wisdom by a Dec. 7 New York Times essay by psychologist Dacher Keltner titled, “In Defense of Teasing.” It highlighted the way teasing—as opposed to bullying or humiliating—is a key component of pleasure and even human connection.
“Teasing is the stage for the drama of flirtation, where suitors provoke in order to look for the sure signs of enduring commitment.,’ Keltner wrote. “…Studies find that married couples with a rich vocabulary of teasing nicknames and formulaic insults are happier and more satisfied.”
The essay struck me partly because it reminded me of some delightful give-and-take from an old romance. My old girlfriend Marlene once called me “scrawny”, and I think I responded by calling her “skinny” and a chase ensued. The jabs had points—I am a slender dude and she had rail-thin legs. But given the affectionate way we spoke those words, the put-downs acted as cupid arrows. The thrill of that exchange is partly why I still get nostalgic about her.
My first wife Kay called me “scrappy” based on the way I played basketball. It was an affirming description, but it symbolized the way our relationship could err on the side of seriousness. Kay has a clever, dry sense of humor. But our preoccupation with taking care of each other meant mischievousness often went missing.
I recaptured a sense of delight with my wife Rowena. When I met her nearly nine years ago, she struck me as a perfect balance of Marlene’s extreme romanticism and Kay’s anti-romantic realism. We also share a playfulness around movement, a hungry curiosity about the world and a sense of wonder about our two kids.
But we haven’t found a groove when it comes to romantic teasing. Often we feel sensitive to each other’s digs. Or maybe we haven’t found a way to deliver them in the right way. Rowena’s got a sarcastic, sometimes raunchy sense of humor. She shared this style with her first husband, though the common ground didn’t ultimately keep them close.
Rowena thinks our senses of humor may never click exactly. She may be right, but I’m not willing to give up yet. I at least can thicken my skin and lighten up more. I’ve long had a “safety first” mantra which can drive my kids batty during rough-housing and get in my own way of having fun. My buddy Joel once called me his “earnest” friend. I cringe a little at the description, which was spot on. Too much safety and seriousness veers into the dull and somber.
***
So I’m grateful to Keltner for refreshing my memory that relationships can be deepened by both heartfelt hugs and light-hearted zingers. But his words offer a still larger contribution. As a society, we should be concerned about going too far when it comes to comforting our brothers and sisters. By seeking a pain-free society, we may create a sterile one.
Economically speaking, I think you can see risk-taking as roughly analogous to a kind of societal teasing. A new business venture amounts to a challenge to established firms. During the past decade, such economic “teasing” was taken to the level of “tricks”. Unscrupulous lenders pushed mortgages on consumers with payments destined to mushroom to unaffordable levels. Largely unregulated financial services firms peddled new, little understood investment products that depended on a housing market bubble.
All the dubious activity enriched a few, but led to an unstable financial system that has required billions in public bail outs and helped send the economy into a deepening recession.
To go to far in the other direction though—to banish risk altogether—would result in an economic system that’s likely to be not only less prosperous but even dull. Through entrepreneurial or investment risk, an individual sticks his neck out from the group, in a sense mocking the more powerful or status quo as inadequate. My friend Art recently observed that the U.S. is the most fascinating country to watch with its booms and busts—we should retain something of that dynamic story.
Preserving a degree of public playfulness is about more than just the economy. There’s been concern that jokes cannot be told about Obama, who can come across as a serious dude. Even amid our crises, we ought not to take ourselves too seriously. It may be more important than ever to be able to laugh. In the hard road ahead, laughter will be a rare luxury.
***
It’s fitting that the economic crisis is coming to a head of sorts in winter. The season of darkness, when we lose light, lose the life of plants, lose the comfort of warmer weather. The holiday rituals are an elaborate effort—not always successful—to pick up our spirits with lights and social gatherings. The best of the holiday music nods to the downerness of the days. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio is a case in point, with the bittersweet “Christmas Time is Here” offsetting more upbeat songs like “Hark, the Herald Angles Sing” and the classic piano rave-up “Linus and Lucy.”
Maybe the truism is right—we need some bad times to bring out our best. We have to face loss to experience the gifts of brotherhood and communal cheer.
In “Christmas Time is Here,” the kids on the recording sing: “Oh that we could always see such spirit through the year.”
That oft-repeated sentiment has a larger significance amid today’s recession. We can’t afford to lose the holiday spirit this year. We need collective hope and compassion and playfulness.
Can we do it, as Jean Robertson might ask? Can we create tidings of comfort and joy out of the current gloom? Even a Grattan kindergartener knows the answer: Yes we can.
Amid these losses, though, I’m finding myself gaining. Or perhaps better said, regaining. In recent weeks, hope and idealism that had quietly ebbed in me over the years washed back. I am feeling once again a fundamental faith that we can and must comfort each other. And an essay I read about the importance of teasing jolted me back to the deliciousness of romantic ribbing and led to a wiser take on playfulness.
These positive personal tales also fit into some bigger, public ones. For many of us, it seems, tis’ the season to be both melancholy and jolly.
***
My gift of newfound optimism has to do with the big O. The big win of the big O, really. Because if Barack Obama had lost Nov. 4, I would probably be feeling pessimistic big-time right about now.
Like some other liberals, in the days before the election, I was paranoid Obama’s lead in the polls would somehow disappear and our team would fail. This fear of faltering in the fourth quarter, in the clutch, runs deep in me. Not only have I failed to decisively win any organized sports championships in my life, but I hail from Buffalo. The city where the Buffalo Bills hold the dubious honor of being the only professional football team to make it to the Super Bowl championship four straight years only to lose each time.
I tried to compensate during this year’s election with effort. I made more than 500 phone calls from my home for Obama. I spent a Saturday with my friend Monique in Nevada, amid llama farms and lots of angry dogs, asking voters in the swing state to back Barack. The last days before Nov. 4, I campaigned for Obama at his downtown San Francisco headquarters. Many of my 11th-hour calls were to voters in Florida. The state I’d spent hours calling for the doomed Kerry campaign. Where the Dems came up short in 2000.
I secretly worried I was cursing Obama’s chances even as I dialed for voters.
But he won. And that win suddenly made concepts like hope and community and sacrifice real again, grippable—like the way Oprah Winfrey apparently just grabbed and held onto a stranger at the victory celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park. Obama really won. By a lot. Americans not only were willing to put a legacy of racism aside, but cast their lot for the man and the party saying “yes we can.”
A night or two after the election, I suddenly made the connection that Obama’s mantra is the same as the morning chant at my son’s elementary school. Grattan Principal Jean Robertson starts each day by assembling all the students on the playground, sharing announcements and then asking the kids, “What’d you come to school for today?” Students, teachers and parents answer, “To Learn.” And Jean shouts back, “Can you do it?” And about 350 voices belt out: “Yes we can!”
In the weeks since school began for my kindergartener, I’d appreciated the morning call and response as a nice, motivating ritual. But now I saw the richness of this every-day articulation of hope and determination, its elevation of a collective, ambitious philosophy. It dawned on me that the kids could have said “Yes I can.” The Grattan go-get-‘em pep talk was not just sweet but bordering on sacred.
Of course, Grattan isn’t perfect. My wife and I have already butted up against bureaucracy and questioned some of the school decisions. But something democratic and deeply hopeful is alive at this little school, which has attracted growing numbers of families in recent years. Grattan prides itself in part on the Grattan Way, a four-part code of respectfulness, responsibility, safety and kindness.
I now find myself having more faith in the good stuff going on at Grattan, and wanting to get more involved in it. The Grattan Way, after all, is my way too—ideals I’ve held since childhood and eventually shaped a political philosophy around.
***
That philosophy—pretty much a traditional liberalism—has taken a beating over the years. Like other liberals, I was stunned that the country could reelect George W. in 2004, even though he’d misled us into the Iraq war and botched that mission terribly.
Not only did I worry that Rove’s “permanent Republican majority” was a real possibility, but my own professional choices over the past two decades have distanced me from my college-era activist bent. Yes, I taught public high school in New York City for four years and interned at both The Nation and The Village Voice. But for the last 13 years I’ve been a journalist writing for the mainstream media or the business press.
That can be a noble pursuit, and I’m proud of a number of investigative articles that I’ve written—stories that may have reached a wider audience than if they’d appeared in a lefty publication.
Still, there’s been a cost to where I’ve hung my byline. It has to do with the “objectivity” demanded by the mainstream media. Despite writing probably upwards of 2,000 articles over the years, I can feel that my voice and--my passions--have been silenced some.
The sense of having been gradually quieted politically and professionally is partly why Obama’s win was such a satisfying present, such a poignant payoff. I kept crying in the wake of the victory. Tuesday night, I pumped my first and hissed out from clenched teeth “We fucking won Florida!”—but did it with my voice breaking. I teared up during the acceptance speech. I wept in the following days at stories of Obama breaking barriers. I choked up as I thought about my mother voting for Obama despite her pro-life position.
There was some serious grief being released here. A store of sadness I was barely conscious of, that I believe came from hope dying to some degree over the years.
The same surprisingly intense crying overtook me when I began dating my wife, and I recognized that I’d settled for a less-than-full level of happiness in my first marriage.
You see this overwhelm turn athletes to mush when they reach the top after a long journey. Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics was a seven foot-tall baby after winning the National Basketball Championship earlier this year, rocking and crying and shouting, “anything’s possible!”
Maybe it takes tears to clean off dusty but dearly help dreams—whether they be of a basketball title or a big love or a better world.
Because apart from making weepy, Obama’s win has awakened my political passions. I feel inspired to take on projects like creating a more just economy, tackling the violence and poverty of my own neighborhood, and staving off climate disaster.
I don’t think I’m alone. I’m sure most McCain voters aren’t nearly as pumped up as I am, but I suspect many agreed with McCain himself who said in his concession speech that Obama’s election says something great about America. And many McCain-Palin people may have been stirred when Obama called on all of us to get ready to pitch in during his acceptance speech.
In fact, even though Obama got less than 55 percent of the popular vote, a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll indicates that 79 percent of the public thinks he will do a good job as president.
Those who voted for Obama, meanwhile, feel shaken, not stirred, and in the best way possible. Election night, throngs of people in multiple American cities including San Francisco erupted in spontaneous street parties. My wife and I celebrated with champagne, leaning out our window to join in the cries of “woo hoo”, “yeah!” and a more primal “HAHHHH!”
Those yells weren’t just about relief, joy and silliness. On some level we were restating a serious resolve. We were shouting “Yes We Can.”
***
It’s tempting to call that phrase an empty slogan. A recent profile of leftist author Naomi Klein in the New Yorker quotes Klein along these lines, as she points to more conservative Obama stances on issues including war in Afghanistan.
But to minimize the motto ignores how powerful it is to highlight the social over the individual for a change. Talk about the change we need--virtually all the ills wrought by the Bush Administration stem from prizing the individual at the expense of the group. The cowboy foreign policy in Iraq. The you’re-on-your-own economic policies that widened the wealth gap and ignored the perils of unfettered markets. The disregard for future generations or the global community when it comes to the environment.
In fact, reconnecting with the basic idea of collective action is the only way we will get out of the economic crisis upon us. Consumers and businesses are reining in spending and retrenching in ways that may make sense for them individually, but are sending us as a whole into a self-perpetuating spiral of reduced demand and layoffs. It’s the recipe for another Depression.
Thankfully, though, we went through one of those already. And Americans appear to be remembering that people can solve problems together. A study published last year by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found “increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies.”
In other words, there seems to be a yes-we-can spirit in the air.
That spirit was reinforced for me recently in the realm of religion. I have been attending Old First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco for the past few months, and a sermon two Sundays ago by pastor Maggi Henderson reminded me of the spiritual, moral component of community. Henderson spoke about the prophet Isaiah’s words, “’Comfort, O comfort My people,’ says your God.” We often think of comfort as a lack of pain, as in comfortable shoes, Henderson said. But, she said, there’s a more active, communal meaning: the idea that collectively we fortify each other.
Henderson’s sermon was another gift of the season. Her call for a kind of solidarity to transcend tough times gave me a greater appreciation of the well-worn holiday phrase: tidings of comfort and joy. The good news is that we’re stronger together.
***
But there’s more to the comfort-and-joy story. Part of what makes us happy is a little discomfort. I was reminded of this wisdom by a Dec. 7 New York Times essay by psychologist Dacher Keltner titled, “In Defense of Teasing.” It highlighted the way teasing—as opposed to bullying or humiliating—is a key component of pleasure and even human connection.
“Teasing is the stage for the drama of flirtation, where suitors provoke in order to look for the sure signs of enduring commitment.,’ Keltner wrote. “…Studies find that married couples with a rich vocabulary of teasing nicknames and formulaic insults are happier and more satisfied.”
The essay struck me partly because it reminded me of some delightful give-and-take from an old romance. My old girlfriend Marlene once called me “scrawny”, and I think I responded by calling her “skinny” and a chase ensued. The jabs had points—I am a slender dude and she had rail-thin legs. But given the affectionate way we spoke those words, the put-downs acted as cupid arrows. The thrill of that exchange is partly why I still get nostalgic about her.
My first wife Kay called me “scrappy” based on the way I played basketball. It was an affirming description, but it symbolized the way our relationship could err on the side of seriousness. Kay has a clever, dry sense of humor. But our preoccupation with taking care of each other meant mischievousness often went missing.
I recaptured a sense of delight with my wife Rowena. When I met her nearly nine years ago, she struck me as a perfect balance of Marlene’s extreme romanticism and Kay’s anti-romantic realism. We also share a playfulness around movement, a hungry curiosity about the world and a sense of wonder about our two kids.
But we haven’t found a groove when it comes to romantic teasing. Often we feel sensitive to each other’s digs. Or maybe we haven’t found a way to deliver them in the right way. Rowena’s got a sarcastic, sometimes raunchy sense of humor. She shared this style with her first husband, though the common ground didn’t ultimately keep them close.
Rowena thinks our senses of humor may never click exactly. She may be right, but I’m not willing to give up yet. I at least can thicken my skin and lighten up more. I’ve long had a “safety first” mantra which can drive my kids batty during rough-housing and get in my own way of having fun. My buddy Joel once called me his “earnest” friend. I cringe a little at the description, which was spot on. Too much safety and seriousness veers into the dull and somber.
***
So I’m grateful to Keltner for refreshing my memory that relationships can be deepened by both heartfelt hugs and light-hearted zingers. But his words offer a still larger contribution. As a society, we should be concerned about going too far when it comes to comforting our brothers and sisters. By seeking a pain-free society, we may create a sterile one.
Economically speaking, I think you can see risk-taking as roughly analogous to a kind of societal teasing. A new business venture amounts to a challenge to established firms. During the past decade, such economic “teasing” was taken to the level of “tricks”. Unscrupulous lenders pushed mortgages on consumers with payments destined to mushroom to unaffordable levels. Largely unregulated financial services firms peddled new, little understood investment products that depended on a housing market bubble.
All the dubious activity enriched a few, but led to an unstable financial system that has required billions in public bail outs and helped send the economy into a deepening recession.
To go to far in the other direction though—to banish risk altogether—would result in an economic system that’s likely to be not only less prosperous but even dull. Through entrepreneurial or investment risk, an individual sticks his neck out from the group, in a sense mocking the more powerful or status quo as inadequate. My friend Art recently observed that the U.S. is the most fascinating country to watch with its booms and busts—we should retain something of that dynamic story.
Preserving a degree of public playfulness is about more than just the economy. There’s been concern that jokes cannot be told about Obama, who can come across as a serious dude. Even amid our crises, we ought not to take ourselves too seriously. It may be more important than ever to be able to laugh. In the hard road ahead, laughter will be a rare luxury.
***
It’s fitting that the economic crisis is coming to a head of sorts in winter. The season of darkness, when we lose light, lose the life of plants, lose the comfort of warmer weather. The holiday rituals are an elaborate effort—not always successful—to pick up our spirits with lights and social gatherings. The best of the holiday music nods to the downerness of the days. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio is a case in point, with the bittersweet “Christmas Time is Here” offsetting more upbeat songs like “Hark, the Herald Angles Sing” and the classic piano rave-up “Linus and Lucy.”
Maybe the truism is right—we need some bad times to bring out our best. We have to face loss to experience the gifts of brotherhood and communal cheer.
In “Christmas Time is Here,” the kids on the recording sing: “Oh that we could always see such spirit through the year.”
That oft-repeated sentiment has a larger significance amid today’s recession. We can’t afford to lose the holiday spirit this year. We need collective hope and compassion and playfulness.
Can we do it, as Jean Robertson might ask? Can we create tidings of comfort and joy out of the current gloom? Even a Grattan kindergartener knows the answer: Yes we can.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Super Boy
I was struck by the words on a package of underwear I bought the other day for my son Julius: “Super Boy.”
Most papas think their sons are Super Boys to some extent. I’m no exception. I take great pride in the way Julius Randall, 5, syncopates and does double time as a drummer, swings across rings with such grace and power as to regularly elicit compliments from the playground parenting crowd, and grills grown-ups about what they are up to. This last habit may grate on some friends’ nerves at times, but as a journalist I love seeing him demonstrate such curiosity and tenacity.
I also see some amazing things from him when it comes to words. Julius has this striking way of employing phrases beyond his years—often beyond even my years. One example is the way he can announce bad news, as in: “Mama, I’m so sorry, but Skyla (his kid sister) just poured paint on the carpet.” When he was at the beach with other kids making tunnels and pools in the sand, he said: “Guys, this calls for some tools.”
The “this calls for” phrase was straight out of an old superhero cartoon. That’s not a complete surprise, since he loves watching old Superman and Aquaman cartoons on YouTube.
But Julius doesn’t just imitate. He innovates. The boy who made up some of his own sign language signs as an infant now makes up his own words and turns of phrase. Like “Bizday” as a day of the week in addition to the usual seven. A “double push-up” is when one person does a push up while a second person does one on the back of the first person (I don’t think he and I have managed this yet, but we’ll get there). “The Russian flier” refers to the paper airplane design we learned from the Russian immigrant mother of a circus-school classmate.
In this same spirit of naming, he’s given me a moniker. My wife Rowena and I decided to call ourselves “Mama” and “Papa” before we had Julius and Skyla, and that’s how we refer to each other. But Julius has taken to calling his mother “Mom” much of the time. And much of the time he calls me “Dada”—pronounced “dad-ah.”
He may have picked up this term from his dear friends Isa and Felix. In any event, it is about the last name I would have given to myself as a father. It doesn’t have that hipster/retro flair that partly drew me to “Papa.” And it can come across as babyish. Only it doesn’t when Julius uses it to give me precise, elaborate directions, such as “Dada, put the blanket over your head and pretend the piano is me and the TV is Skyla.” And who cares about hipsterhood when Julius says “Dada” and nuzzles me with his wiry-haired head, or reaches out to hold my hand from his loft bed.
Dada is now one of my favorite words in the world.
Some of my others are ones he mispronounces. Like “breakrast” for “breakfast” and “pokskible” for “popsicle.” Part of me hopes he never gets those “right.”
There's also "hostible" instead of "hospital." However you pronounce it, that word was on our minds today, because Julius spent a traumatic few hours in the local emergency room. He had to get three stitches after splitting his forehead open on a stone wall—as he put it to the ER staff, he was “running on full speed” and didn’t look where he was going.
Julius can be shy and fearful at times. But today he showed he also is courageous. While he lay on a gurney, we talked about how courage means going through something even though you are afraid. Despite some tears and his fear of stitches, he held totally still while his half-inch gash was cleaned with saline water, numbed up, and sewn up.
Our wonderful nurse, Teo, called Julius a superhero. I couldn’t agree more.
Julius can be shy and fearful at times. But today he showed he also is courageous. While he lay on a gurney, we talked about how courage means going through something even though you are afraid. Despite some tears and his fear of stitches, he held totally still while his half-inch gash was cleaned with saline water, numbed up, and sewn up.
Our wonderful nurse, Teo, called Julius a superhero. I couldn’t agree more.
Friday, April 11, 2008
From Tough Luck to Tough Love--the updated version
Below is an updated version of my essay introduction—one that tries to address any confusion over the phrase “tough love” from the get-go.
Usually in America, when someone loses their job or has their fledgling business go belly up, we respond with a collective, “tough luck.”
What we ought to be giving is tough love.
The tough luck approach contains a smidgeon of empathy. But mostly it means the individual is on their own. Society doesn’t feel much responsibility, nor does it offer much help in terms of handling the resulting unemployment and related risks of home loss and deteriorating personal relations.
Saying “tough luck” borders on cruel in today’s global economy, which is ever-more turbulent and in which corporations frequently layoff workers even in good times.
When I call for “tough love,” I mean equal parts care and accountability. Conservatives can define this term to mean that virtually any help given to someone undermines self-reliance. For that reason, I think, liberals who focus on the connectedness of individuals can find the phrase distasteful. I aim to reframe “tough love” as a term that succinctly captures the importance of both personal responsibility and collective aid.
Tough love, in this sense, would mean showing enough compassion to truly help an economically displaced person get back on their feet—even giving them a job if they couldn’t find another. It would mean recognizing that we as a whole share some responsibility for the person’s problem, because society created conditions in which they failed or found themselves without a job. But we’d set limits on how much we would shelter or aid them, to avoid coddling people into dependence or passivity.
Tough love also might mean a different attitude about people before they get into an economic pickle. It might mean doing more to nurture their creativity or talents, such as a universal system of sabbaticals.
Tough love might seem soft-headed or sentimental. And there is a moral component to a social safety net that better protects fellow human beings when they’re blown off the economic ladder. Over the past few decades, economic risk has shifted from companies and government to individuals. The result is increasingly volatile incomes for American families and a kind of mass callousness toward the “losers.”
But a kinder, more proactive safety net also can serve as a springy catalyst for hard-headed economic growth. A degree of economic security can lead to inspired work by employees and individuals. At the very least, it would temper calls to close off global trade in ways that are short-sighted and selfish as a nation. And fostering people’s innovations, including artistic ones, has become vital in an economy where “human capital” is rising in importance and right-brained, conceptual thinking is seen as the future.
Denmark offers a case study in the promise of economic tough love. The country has combined generous unemployment benefits with restrictions on public aid and the ability of businesses to hire and fire with ease. The results of Denmark’s “flexicurity” are stellar economic growth and a highly egalitarian society.
To be sure, there are pitfalls to putting tough love into practice. Taxing the populace too high to pay for the safety net threatens to repel entrepreneurs or others keen on growing wealthy. Denmark is currently wrestling with this issue.
America, though, has a long ways to go before it creates a safety net so expensive that it pushes key talent abroad. By far our bigger hurdle is helping our existing workforce both avoid devastating economic setbacks and reach its highest potential—in part by reducing the fear of such setbacks.
Focusing on Americans’ economic confidence and seeing a significant societal role in their development isn’t easy to do, though, because of some powerful myths at the center of our national culture. Horatio Alger and the story of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps has long steered us to view Americans as solo heroes on very individual paths.
There’s also an American penchant for the all-or-nothing, for betting everything on a dream. These narratives contain kernels of truth about the importance of the individual and the thrill of the extreme. But they romanticize risk and hide the help people get from those around them.
As the United States has become more of a winner-take-all, tough-luck economy over the past few decades, Americans have responded in some dysfunctional ways. We’ve literally turned to luck, spending money on gambling as never before. And we have gravitated to the mean-spirited, fantastical theory of “The Secret,” which claims individual success comes to those who wish hard enough—and implies the unsuccessful are to blame for their misfortune.
But there are signs we’re ready for a new, more social story. That we are starting to remember America’s communal heritage, with its barn-raisings and civic traditions. That we’re more open to learning from other cultures that put more emphasis on the collective than we do. Natural disasters and the potential for them are bringing us together as a country and a globe. Social networking sites are highlighting the fact that other people are not just consumers to be sold to or job competition, but critical supports in one’s career. The populace is shifting leftward politically, even if policies aren’t yet.
Marketers are ahead of our political and economic policies. They seem to sense the greater openness to brotherly- and sisterly love welling up in the country. An Adidas storefront recently had this written on its window: “Every team needs a hero. Every hero needs a team.”
Usually in America, when someone loses their job or has their fledgling business go belly up, we respond with a collective, “tough luck.”
What we ought to be giving is tough love.
The tough luck approach contains a smidgeon of empathy. But mostly it means the individual is on their own. Society doesn’t feel much responsibility, nor does it offer much help in terms of handling the resulting unemployment and related risks of home loss and deteriorating personal relations.
Saying “tough luck” borders on cruel in today’s global economy, which is ever-more turbulent and in which corporations frequently layoff workers even in good times.
When I call for “tough love,” I mean equal parts care and accountability. Conservatives can define this term to mean that virtually any help given to someone undermines self-reliance. For that reason, I think, liberals who focus on the connectedness of individuals can find the phrase distasteful. I aim to reframe “tough love” as a term that succinctly captures the importance of both personal responsibility and collective aid.
Tough love, in this sense, would mean showing enough compassion to truly help an economically displaced person get back on their feet—even giving them a job if they couldn’t find another. It would mean recognizing that we as a whole share some responsibility for the person’s problem, because society created conditions in which they failed or found themselves without a job. But we’d set limits on how much we would shelter or aid them, to avoid coddling people into dependence or passivity.
Tough love also might mean a different attitude about people before they get into an economic pickle. It might mean doing more to nurture their creativity or talents, such as a universal system of sabbaticals.
Tough love might seem soft-headed or sentimental. And there is a moral component to a social safety net that better protects fellow human beings when they’re blown off the economic ladder. Over the past few decades, economic risk has shifted from companies and government to individuals. The result is increasingly volatile incomes for American families and a kind of mass callousness toward the “losers.”
But a kinder, more proactive safety net also can serve as a springy catalyst for hard-headed economic growth. A degree of economic security can lead to inspired work by employees and individuals. At the very least, it would temper calls to close off global trade in ways that are short-sighted and selfish as a nation. And fostering people’s innovations, including artistic ones, has become vital in an economy where “human capital” is rising in importance and right-brained, conceptual thinking is seen as the future.
Denmark offers a case study in the promise of economic tough love. The country has combined generous unemployment benefits with restrictions on public aid and the ability of businesses to hire and fire with ease. The results of Denmark’s “flexicurity” are stellar economic growth and a highly egalitarian society.
To be sure, there are pitfalls to putting tough love into practice. Taxing the populace too high to pay for the safety net threatens to repel entrepreneurs or others keen on growing wealthy. Denmark is currently wrestling with this issue.
America, though, has a long ways to go before it creates a safety net so expensive that it pushes key talent abroad. By far our bigger hurdle is helping our existing workforce both avoid devastating economic setbacks and reach its highest potential—in part by reducing the fear of such setbacks.
Focusing on Americans’ economic confidence and seeing a significant societal role in their development isn’t easy to do, though, because of some powerful myths at the center of our national culture. Horatio Alger and the story of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps has long steered us to view Americans as solo heroes on very individual paths.
There’s also an American penchant for the all-or-nothing, for betting everything on a dream. These narratives contain kernels of truth about the importance of the individual and the thrill of the extreme. But they romanticize risk and hide the help people get from those around them.
As the United States has become more of a winner-take-all, tough-luck economy over the past few decades, Americans have responded in some dysfunctional ways. We’ve literally turned to luck, spending money on gambling as never before. And we have gravitated to the mean-spirited, fantastical theory of “The Secret,” which claims individual success comes to those who wish hard enough—and implies the unsuccessful are to blame for their misfortune.
But there are signs we’re ready for a new, more social story. That we are starting to remember America’s communal heritage, with its barn-raisings and civic traditions. That we’re more open to learning from other cultures that put more emphasis on the collective than we do. Natural disasters and the potential for them are bringing us together as a country and a globe. Social networking sites are highlighting the fact that other people are not just consumers to be sold to or job competition, but critical supports in one’s career. The populace is shifting leftward politically, even if policies aren’t yet.
Marketers are ahead of our political and economic policies. They seem to sense the greater openness to brotherly- and sisterly love welling up in the country. An Adidas storefront recently had this written on its window: “Every team needs a hero. Every hero needs a team.”
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
From Tough Luck to Tough Love
Usually in America, when someone loses their job or has their fledgling business go belly up, we respond with a collective, “tough luck.”
What we ought to be giving is tough love.
The tough luck approach contains a smidgeon of empathy. But mostly it means the individual is on their own. Society doesn’t feel much responsibility, nor does it offer much help in terms of handling the resulting unemployment and related risks of home loss and deteriorating personal relations.
Saying “tough luck” borders on cruel in today’s global economy, which is ever-more turbulent and in which corporations frequently layoff workers even in good times.
Tough love would mean recognizing that we as a whole are accountable to a degree for the person’s problem, in the sense that we created conditions in which they failed or found themselves without a job. We also would show enough care for them to truly help them get back on their feet—even giving them a job if they couldn’t find another. But we’d set limits on how long we would shelter or aid them, to avoid coddling people into dependence or passivity.
Tough love also might mean a different attitude about people before they get into an economic pickle. It might mean doing more to nurture their creativity or talents, such as a universal system of sabbaticals.
Tough love might seem soft-headed or sentimental. And there is a moral component to a social safety net that better protects fellow human beings when they’re blown off the economic ladder. Over the past few decades, economic risk has shifted from companies and government to individuals. The result is increasingly volatile incomes for American families and a kind of mass callousness toward the “losers.”
But a kinder, more proactive safety net also can serve as a springy catalyst for hard-headed economic growth. A degree of economic security can lead to inspired work by employees and individuals. At the very least, it would temper calls to close off global trade in ways that are short-sighted and selfish as a nation. And fostering people’s innovations, including artistic ones, has become vital in an economy where “human capital” is rising in importance and right-brained, conceptual thinking is seen as the future.
Denmark offers a case study in the promise of economic tough love. The country has combined generous unemployment benefits with restrictions on public aid and the ability of businesses to hire and fire with ease. The results of Denmark’s “flexicurity” are stellar economic growth and a highly egalitarian society.
To be sure, there are pitfalls to putting tough love into practice. Taxing the populace too high to pay for the safety net threatens to repel entrepreneurs or others keen on growing wealthy. Denmark is currently wrestling with this issue.
America, though, has a long ways to go before it creates a safety net so expensive that it pushes key talent abroad. By far our bigger hurdle is helping our existing workforce both avoid devastating economic setbacks and reach its highest potential—in part by reducing the fear of such setbacks.
Focusing on Americans’ economic confidence and seeing a significant societal role in their development isn’t easy to do, though, because of some powerful myths at the center of our national culture. Horatio Alger and the story of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps has long steered us to view Americans as solo heroes on very individual paths.
There’s also an American penchant for the all-or-nothing, for betting everything on a dream. These narratives contain kernels of truth about the importance of the individual and the thrill of the extreme. But they romanticize risk and hide the help people get from those around them.
As the United States has become more of a winner-take-all, tough-luck economy over the past few decades, Americans have responded in some dysfunctional ways. We’ve literally turned to luck, spending money on gambling as never before. And we have gravitated to the mean-spirited, fantastical theory of “The Secret,” which claims individual success comes to those who wish hard enough—and implies the unsuccessful are to blame for their misfortune.
But there are signs we’re ready for a new, more social story. That we are starting to remember America’s communal heritage, with its barn-raisings and civic traditions. That we’re more open to learning from other cultures that put more emphasis on the collective than we do. Natural disasters and the potential for them are bringing us together as a country and a globe. Social networking sites are highlighting the fact that other people are not just consumers to be sold to or job competition, but critical supports in one’s career. The populace is shifting leftward politically, even if policies aren’t yet.
Marketers are ahead of our political and economic policies. They seem to sense the greater openness to brotherly- and sisterly love welling up in the country. An Adidas storefront recently had this written on its window: “Every team needs a hero. Every hero needs a team.”
What we ought to be giving is tough love.
The tough luck approach contains a smidgeon of empathy. But mostly it means the individual is on their own. Society doesn’t feel much responsibility, nor does it offer much help in terms of handling the resulting unemployment and related risks of home loss and deteriorating personal relations.
Saying “tough luck” borders on cruel in today’s global economy, which is ever-more turbulent and in which corporations frequently layoff workers even in good times.
Tough love would mean recognizing that we as a whole are accountable to a degree for the person’s problem, in the sense that we created conditions in which they failed or found themselves without a job. We also would show enough care for them to truly help them get back on their feet—even giving them a job if they couldn’t find another. But we’d set limits on how long we would shelter or aid them, to avoid coddling people into dependence or passivity.
Tough love also might mean a different attitude about people before they get into an economic pickle. It might mean doing more to nurture their creativity or talents, such as a universal system of sabbaticals.
Tough love might seem soft-headed or sentimental. And there is a moral component to a social safety net that better protects fellow human beings when they’re blown off the economic ladder. Over the past few decades, economic risk has shifted from companies and government to individuals. The result is increasingly volatile incomes for American families and a kind of mass callousness toward the “losers.”
But a kinder, more proactive safety net also can serve as a springy catalyst for hard-headed economic growth. A degree of economic security can lead to inspired work by employees and individuals. At the very least, it would temper calls to close off global trade in ways that are short-sighted and selfish as a nation. And fostering people’s innovations, including artistic ones, has become vital in an economy where “human capital” is rising in importance and right-brained, conceptual thinking is seen as the future.
Denmark offers a case study in the promise of economic tough love. The country has combined generous unemployment benefits with restrictions on public aid and the ability of businesses to hire and fire with ease. The results of Denmark’s “flexicurity” are stellar economic growth and a highly egalitarian society.
To be sure, there are pitfalls to putting tough love into practice. Taxing the populace too high to pay for the safety net threatens to repel entrepreneurs or others keen on growing wealthy. Denmark is currently wrestling with this issue.
America, though, has a long ways to go before it creates a safety net so expensive that it pushes key talent abroad. By far our bigger hurdle is helping our existing workforce both avoid devastating economic setbacks and reach its highest potential—in part by reducing the fear of such setbacks.
Focusing on Americans’ economic confidence and seeing a significant societal role in their development isn’t easy to do, though, because of some powerful myths at the center of our national culture. Horatio Alger and the story of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps has long steered us to view Americans as solo heroes on very individual paths.
There’s also an American penchant for the all-or-nothing, for betting everything on a dream. These narratives contain kernels of truth about the importance of the individual and the thrill of the extreme. But they romanticize risk and hide the help people get from those around them.
As the United States has become more of a winner-take-all, tough-luck economy over the past few decades, Americans have responded in some dysfunctional ways. We’ve literally turned to luck, spending money on gambling as never before. And we have gravitated to the mean-spirited, fantastical theory of “The Secret,” which claims individual success comes to those who wish hard enough—and implies the unsuccessful are to blame for their misfortune.
But there are signs we’re ready for a new, more social story. That we are starting to remember America’s communal heritage, with its barn-raisings and civic traditions. That we’re more open to learning from other cultures that put more emphasis on the collective than we do. Natural disasters and the potential for them are bringing us together as a country and a globe. Social networking sites are highlighting the fact that other people are not just consumers to be sold to or job competition, but critical supports in one’s career. The populace is shifting leftward politically, even if policies aren’t yet.
Marketers are ahead of our political and economic policies. They seem to sense the greater openness to brotherly- and sisterly love welling up in the country. An Adidas storefront recently had this written on its window: “Every team needs a hero. Every hero needs a team.”
Welcome to FrauenTimes!
My name is Ed Frauenheim. My full name is Edward Edmund Frauenheim IV. I say that to distinguish myself from my dad, Edward Edmund Frauenheim III, a Chicago-based entrepreneur who also calls himself Ed Frauenheim. I like my full name and am proud of my lineage. But it has seemed pretentious to me to use that full name or even the “IV” in a byline.
And I’m a byline guy. I’ve been a professional journalist based in San Francisco since 1995, writing for newspapers, magazines and Web sites. I currently am a Senior Writer at business publication Workforce Management magazine. At Workforce Management, I work with excellent editors and reporters, and I’ve been able to publish some of my best writing there.
But I have long aspired to be more than a traditional reporter. I hope also to be a “public intellectual.” In other words, I want to come up with and express ideas that affect public debate and change attitudes. What’s more, I have found that my work as a traditional journalist can stifle the activist in me. And limit the topics I write about.
That’s where this blog comes in. On it, I plan to articulate ideas and explore topics and advocate positions in ways I haven’t up to now. One of the main topics I’ll write about is economic policy. And on that topic I plan to publish an essay that I’m currently calling “From Tough Luck to Tough Love.” It calls for treating Americans with both care and accountability when it comes to the economic realm, with greater recognition of the way individuals in today’s turbulent global economy need help from society and the way society can prosper through a stronger safety net. This essay will grow over time, I hope, and may eventually take the form of a book.
“From Tough Luck to Tough Love” and other items published here may include bits of memoir. That’s a choice inspired partly by my wife, Rowena Richie. In her writings and dance-making, she has shown me the power of combining conventional research with personal stories. Of seeing the big story in the small one, and vice versa.
Besides a writer and a husband, I’m the father of two young kids. Julius and Skyla not only amaze me with their antics, observations and curiosity, but inspire me to speak “authentically.” To be true to myself. To be my best self.
I think psychologist Abraham Maslow was on to something with his notion of “self-actualization” as the peak human state. Reading about Maslow on Wikipedia recently, I was struck by this description, attributed to him, of self-actualization: “an episode or spurt in which the powers of the person come together in a particularly and intensely enjoyable way, and in which he is more integrated and less split, more open for experience, more idiosyncratic…. He becomes in these episodes more truly himself, more perfectly actualising his potentialities, closer to the core of his being, more fully human.”
I felt something along these lines when I first hit on the gist of “From Tough Luck to Tough Love” last October. A way to combine journalism with my interests in economics, intellectual history and cultural analysis. And the essay feels tied to goals I hold dear: to make the world more just, more loving, more peaceful and more joyous. I hope this site more generally will help me achieve that more integrated, true-to-myself state.
At FrauenTimes, I am taking myself seriously enough to get my ideas out in the public. But I aim not to take myself so seriously that I can’t be playful or “punny.” And I recognize that my ideas are bound to improve with responses from readers. So, any questions? Comments? Nasty remarks?
Thanks for visiting.
Ed
And I’m a byline guy. I’ve been a professional journalist based in San Francisco since 1995, writing for newspapers, magazines and Web sites. I currently am a Senior Writer at business publication Workforce Management magazine. At Workforce Management, I work with excellent editors and reporters, and I’ve been able to publish some of my best writing there.
But I have long aspired to be more than a traditional reporter. I hope also to be a “public intellectual.” In other words, I want to come up with and express ideas that affect public debate and change attitudes. What’s more, I have found that my work as a traditional journalist can stifle the activist in me. And limit the topics I write about.
That’s where this blog comes in. On it, I plan to articulate ideas and explore topics and advocate positions in ways I haven’t up to now. One of the main topics I’ll write about is economic policy. And on that topic I plan to publish an essay that I’m currently calling “From Tough Luck to Tough Love.” It calls for treating Americans with both care and accountability when it comes to the economic realm, with greater recognition of the way individuals in today’s turbulent global economy need help from society and the way society can prosper through a stronger safety net. This essay will grow over time, I hope, and may eventually take the form of a book.
“From Tough Luck to Tough Love” and other items published here may include bits of memoir. That’s a choice inspired partly by my wife, Rowena Richie. In her writings and dance-making, she has shown me the power of combining conventional research with personal stories. Of seeing the big story in the small one, and vice versa.
Besides a writer and a husband, I’m the father of two young kids. Julius and Skyla not only amaze me with their antics, observations and curiosity, but inspire me to speak “authentically.” To be true to myself. To be my best self.
I think psychologist Abraham Maslow was on to something with his notion of “self-actualization” as the peak human state. Reading about Maslow on Wikipedia recently, I was struck by this description, attributed to him, of self-actualization: “an episode or spurt in which the powers of the person come together in a particularly and intensely enjoyable way, and in which he is more integrated and less split, more open for experience, more idiosyncratic…. He becomes in these episodes more truly himself, more perfectly actualising his potentialities, closer to the core of his being, more fully human.”
I felt something along these lines when I first hit on the gist of “From Tough Luck to Tough Love” last October. A way to combine journalism with my interests in economics, intellectual history and cultural analysis. And the essay feels tied to goals I hold dear: to make the world more just, more loving, more peaceful and more joyous. I hope this site more generally will help me achieve that more integrated, true-to-myself state.
At FrauenTimes, I am taking myself seriously enough to get my ideas out in the public. But I aim not to take myself so seriously that I can’t be playful or “punny.” And I recognize that my ideas are bound to improve with responses from readers. So, any questions? Comments? Nasty remarks?
Thanks for visiting.
Ed
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