What is democracy and is it a good idea?

Milwaukee Anthropologist is now soliciting essays on the next issue's question: How central is music to the human experience? Email queries to the contact info below by the end of May 2011.


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Thank you for your patience. This issue is much delayed due to a number of factors, all of them ultimately my responsibility. I also beg the indulgence of my gracious contributors, who in addition to their boldness in approaching the topic displayed admirable patience during the delay.

Tony Gibart discusses how the word democracy is used to legitimize political regimes regardless of their respect for their constituents’ equality and unpacks the so-called democratic peace theory used as one justification for the war in Iraq.

Ben Klandrud, a captain in the U.S. Army and student of military history, reminds us to cherish the hard-fought freedoms of our democratic society and that the price of freedom is constant vigilance against many insidious tyrannies. He also laments the voter apathy of many Americans.

Michael LaForest, perennial third-party candidate who in 2010 is a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate, criticizes the two-party political system as a structural deficiency made possible and encouraged by our representative democracy. He suggests that democracy is a good idea but in practice it is flawed and co-opted by powerful minorities—the two major parties, moneyed corporations, and special-interests.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 2, so surely this is an appropriate time to reflect upon the nature of democracy.

Michael Timm
31October2010

P.S. The next issue will consider the topic of music as relates to the human experience. It will be published sometime in 2011. Contact me with your essay ideas at platypus [[dot]] found [[at]] yahoo [[dot]] com.

Also, if you're new to the site, please scroll down and read the many engaging essays from past topics. Thanks for reading.

Please also note that the name of this site may change in 2011--many of you have noted, and I agree, that the "anthropologist" part of the magazine title is a bit of a misnomer. It remains the case, however, that I'm interested in collecting diverse opinions about topics of human import and that interest in exploring what it means to be human can be considered anthropological in a loose sense.

Democracy, used by the powerful to create narratives of hegemony, is a loaded term that requires deconstruction, particularly with regard to “democratic peace theory”

By Tony Gibart

Democracy: What is it, and is it a good idea? The question for this issue reminds me of the oft-quoted quip Gandhi made when asked by a reporter what he thought of Western civilization. He said he thought it was a good idea. With this remark, he was not just saying that the ideals of Western civilization were never fully realized in Western countries, although he certainly was making that point.

To me, what makes the exchange noteworthy is that when Gandhi diffused the reporter’s question by saying Western civilization was a good idea he demonstrated something else: that the phrase “Western civilization” was not simply representative of an idea. Consider the context. The reporter is a colonizer asking the colonized (Gandhi) to comment on the colonizers’ image of themselves as civilized. When the question was posed, I am sure Gandhi couldn’t help but think about what the colonialists’ self-image meant in real terms. In fact, he must have seen the reporter’s question was one of many rhetorical deployments that attempted to mark the civilized from the uncivilized, the superior from the inferior. Gandhi probably perceived the word civilization as the cornerstone of the rhetoric used to justify colonialism—the domination over his people and the pillaging of his land.

Therefore, whether the reporter realized it or not, his question was loaded, even aggressive. With his comment, Gandhi exposed the hypocrisy. He showed how the assignment of who is civilized and who is to be made civilized is on one level arbitrary, and on another level, a function of brute power. By using the idea of civilization to justify domination, the British emptied that word of any real content. Gandhi made obvious the utter inconsistency between how the British use the word civilization and the idea it potentially represents.

With Gandhi’s insight in mind, for me, the question about how to define democracy and the question of whether democracy is a good idea are secondary to an analysis of how the term democracy is used. I use the word secondary not to mean necessarily less important, but to suggest that the real-world consequences of the word democracy, rather than its definition and democracy’s normative value, have greater immediacy. Moreover, if the answers to the other questions are to be sought with reference to empirical data, then the question of how the word democracy is used deserves a position of logical priority.

However, to get at this question I would like to take a path through a claim that some make about the value of democracy. People often extol the value of democracies using the democratic peace theory, which holds that two democracies have never gone to war with one another, or very rarely go to war with one another. As with the claim that colonialism spreads civilization, individuals use the democratic peace theory to justify wars by democratic states against those that are viewed as undemocratic.

The most significant deployment of this claim for my generation was the defense of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. As it became clear that American forces would not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration was forced to shift its explanation for the war. In November 2003, while addressing the British media, President George W. Bush said: “The United States and Great Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or the simple pursuit of interest. We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings. We cannot rely exclusively on military power to assure our long-term security. Lasting peace is gained as justice and democracy advance...If the greater Middle East joins the democratic revolution that has reached much of the world, the lives of millions in that region will be bettered, and a trend of conflict and fear will be ended at its source.” This is without a doubt a clear articulation of the democratic peace theory. While the sequence of events and ever-changing excuses for the war in Iraq cast serious doubt that this was ever a main reason the United States invaded that country, the rationale could not be easily dismissed if the democratic peace theory were potentially true.

In  examining this proposition, another recent conflict is instructive. Before the inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2008, Israel lunched a massive bombardment against the Palestinians in Gaza. Although not necessarily framed as such in the American media, the offensive in Gaza certainly can be considered a war. 1,444 Palestinians and 13 Israelis lost their lives. Israeli forces pounded civilian and civilian infrastructure for a three weeks.

What does this conflict mean for the democratic peace theory? Israel has a democratic form of government. In fact, in the American and foreign media, Israel is often described as the Middle East’s only stable democracy. Imagery of that nation as a shining beacon in the darkness of Arabic despotism is somewhat commonplace. On the other hand, Gaza is governed by Hamas, which is classified by the United States and other countries as a terrorist organization, and its position in Gaza is typically not presented as that of a democratically-elected leadership (I avoid the term government as an acknowledgment that the conditions under which the Gazans live stifle the full potential for governance). However, while it does not go unmentioned that the Palestinians elected Hamas in an American-supported election, the war between Hamas and Israel was not presented as a war between democracies, when by all appearances it was.

Although the killing in Gaza suggests the democratic peace theory is wrong because two democracies went to war, on another level it suggests that perhaps the theory is simply self-justifying. As the word is used in American public discourse, democracy denotes that a regime is legitimate. The democratic credentials of America’s ally in the region, Israel, are unquestioned, even though Arab citizens of that nation are not afforded equal rights, especially the right to hold and own property. Moreover, Palestinian inhabitants who are not Israeli citizens live under military occupation in lands that Israel claims as part of its territory. Needless to say, these facts are inconsistent with the idea of Israel as a shining democracy.

Although the dissonance between the picture of Israeli democracy in American discourse and the reality is particularly strong, it is just one example. In the classic, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky take the 1984 elections in Nicaragua and El Slavador as case studies that demonstrate the malleability of democracy as a label. The authors document quantitatively how the American media highlighted the democratic characteristics of the election that ratified the El Salvadorian regime, which was preferred by the U.S. establishment, even as the country was marred by violent, often systematic, political repression. Despite this, the elections were characterized as a victory for fledgling El Salvadorian democracy. In contrast, in American political discourse, the election of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was portrayed as deeply flawed and phony, even though opponents of the regime benefited from greater political freedom in Nicaragua than existed in El Salvador.

The democratic peace theory is never wrong because only legitimate regimes are portrayed as strongly democratic and rarely are two combating countries seen as legitimate from one point of view. Saying two democracies never go to war is like saying that a civilized nation never colonized another civilized nation. The colonized is never counted among the civilized. I don’t mean to suggest that the word democracy is as problematic as the word civilized. For instance, it might be perfectly reasonable to call a government undemocratic. Whereas, calling a nation uncivilized would likely be an expression of ignorance or bigotry.

However, the word democracy doesn’t have a good track record as a signifier of true legitimacy. Without the 19th Amendment to the Constitution or the 1965 Voting Rights Act it is impossible to classify the United States as a democracy. But according to the standard narrative, this country has been democratic since its founding. The problem is, as Chomsky and Herman show, if a regime bothers to hold an election, one can always point to the formal trappings of the democratic process to legitimate a government. But, democratic formalities reveal very little about where power lies.

The outlook for the word does not seem promising either. The United States will mostly likely always be proudly considered a democracy by its people even though many feel unrepresented and powerless. Yes, we do like our elections—to the point that the drama of a presidential race and inauguration swallows the coverage of virtually all other news (the U.S.-subsidized invasion of Gaza being a good example). Yet, after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Citizens United, elections are likely to become more and more dominated by corporate and special-interest money and less a mechanism by which politicians are accountable to average citizens.

If democracy is not a very useful descriptor, in closing, I suggest a focus instead on equality. In an essay on constitutional interpretation, Catherine MacKinnon wrote “...in a democracy a constitution also has to legitimate itself with the people, and for women, it has a lot to answer for.”

Core to the concept of democracy is the idea that a government gains its legitimacy from the people. However, the history of our country shows that certain people—the poor, blacks, women—are thought not to be important to the legitimating function of democracy. MacKinnon’s simple but brilliant point is that an evaluation of democracy starts from the perspective of these people. “...[T]o the degree the Constitution is not equal, it is not legitimate...” A search for equality may be more complicated than a fixation on forms of democratic government, but by the same token, it may be less susceptible to misappropriation.

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Tony Gibart lives in Madison, Wis. with his dog Blue.

American democracy should welcome third-party perspective, but doesn’t

By Michael LaForest

Is democracy a good idea? It may be, but I have some reservations about the way democracy plays out in American society and specifically in American politics. For now, let’s assume that democracy is a good idea, at least in theory, but we must also consider that the failings of American democracy are rooted in a bipartisan political arena, political ineptitude, corporate-controlled mass media, and a largely apathetic and/or ignorant population.

Entrenched Two-Party System

The primary problem with democracy is that a minority of citizens still control the agenda of our national, state, and/or local governments. This problem is the basis for all of the other failings of a democracy. If we take, for example, the current two-party system of government that comprises our federal and state governments, we don’t have to go back very far in history to get some very good illustrations of how the tyranny of the minority (Democrats or Republicans) can and will, if given the chance, enforce their myopic agenda on the whole of society.

The Bush White House is probably the most blatant example of self-righteous politics that I can think of in modern times. The paranoid, narrow-minded agenda that was unleashed on America between 2000 and 2006 eclipsed the McCarthy debacle. But I would be remiss in my essay if I didn’t also draw attention to the current state of our country that has been orchestrated by the Democratic Party. The Democrats currently control the White House, both houses in our federal and state legislatures, the Wisconsin Governor’s Mansion, and the Milwaukee and Madison mayoral seats. Yet, with all these “progressive” Democrats at the helm of every level of government, our country, our state, and our state’s two largest cities stand at the brink of economic catastrophe.

If democracy worked, one can assume that political leaders—currently in charge of directing, enforcing, and correcting every facet of our society—would, by virtue of their sworn oath to uphold the Constitution, repeal laws that don’t work, direct their subordinates to enforce existing laws that do work, and pass legislation in the best interest of the whole of society. But, the current state of democracy in America seems just the opposite.

Our American political infrastructure is entrenched in a two-party system, presumably because through the democratic process, a two-party political system is what the majority of Americans want. We can just as easily presume, too, that if a bipartisan, democratically-elected government really works, then all the pervasive and persistent problems we have would be corrected by the people elected to correct them. But the problems aren’t being corrected, and they seem to worsen every day.

I submit that the problems we have in this country are deeply rooted in our current two-party system. In fact, the problems are so deeply grounded in a bipartisan political arena that nothing short of a political paradigm shift will fix the fundamental problem that pervades every facet of American politics. That problem is our current election process. If we are ever going to fix all of America’s social, economic, and international problems, the only way that it will ever happen is if our federal, state, and local elections are reformed to the extent that third parties have an equal political field upon which to run their respective campaigns. Equal, that is, to the Republicans and Democrats.

As things are today, the Republican and Democratic parties have so much money and power at every level of our federal, state, and local governments, combined with a dedicated “team” following, that third-party candidates have almost no chance whatsoever of being elected. Additionally, each state has its own ballot access rules, which generally do an excellent job of keeping third-party candidates at bay.* One all-encompassing change that should be instituted on behalf of a more democratic American government is to standardize ballot access rules and procedures for every state. This would provide an avenue through which any person who wanted to be on any ballot for any position could do so with minimal obstruction.**

Entrenched Incumbents & Political Polarization

Wisconsin is no exception to the false ideal of a level political playing field. Having run three partisan campaigns, I can state with absolute conviction that the ballot access requirements give the incumbent an unfair advantage over all of their opponents and the two major parties hold an unfair advantage over every third-party candidate. The incumbent has the power of incumbency and with that, name recognition, and subsequently, DNC or GOP funding. Unless they are complete imbeciles, incumbents almost always get reelected. It is not uncommon to hear of an incumbent getting reelected even after they died or went to prison.

As long as incumbents continue to get reelected, they have no vested interest in change; in fact, they have an implicit mandate to continue doing exactly what they have been doing, since getting reelected is presumably evidence that they are doing exactly what their constituents want.

Democracy can set the stage for career politicians to populate the political landscape for generations. Here in Wisconsin, two of the longest serving politicians in American history have dominated the state and federal legislatures. They really should have left the political stage three decades ago, to let other civic-minded Wisconsin citizens test their political prowess. But just like the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans who get elected and reelected, they have maintained a strict vigil over their own personal political fiefdoms for generations for personal as well as partisan gain.

Who really benefits from having one person legislate for several decades? The real answer is nobody. Democracy is predicated on the premise that everybody has a voice in our government. When so many people maintain positions of power in our legislatures for so long, few people have an opportunity to lead our government. Our legislatures should change consistently to allow for new and fresh political perspectives that would allow for new and better legislation.

In fact, we don’t actually have a “democracy” in America. Our government is a constitutional republic. The difference is that the former mandates that all citizens have an actual voice in our government, while the latter gives way to a representative democracy. This would actually work if our congressional representatives actually listened to all of their constituents, rather than just the loud and obnoxious fringes—polarized zealots with individual and special-interest aspirations. Appeals to single-issue voter fundamentalists now dominate our political discourse. Democracy is very adept at polarizing the citizenry along “anti” lines, i.e. anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-gun, etc.

Voter Apathy & Incumbent Bias

Voting is the most powerful act we have in a true democracy but about half of Americans ignore, or worse yet, blatantly and deliberately forfeit, their right to vote. A vast number of Americans don’t vote, and most who do vote like it was a team sport or a civics exam for which they are relying on rote memorization to pass the test of how many incumbents they remember. Even though only about half of Americans who can vote actually do vote, we still had about 130 million voters cast ballots during the 2008 presidential election, which attracted significantly more interest that past presidential elections. Almost 57 percent of the voting-age population voted in 2008. Mid-term elections have fewer voters, but still a sizable number, hovering around 80 million. Only 37 percent of eligible voters voted in the 2006 mid-term.

When there are so many voters, individual votes are meaningless: Democracy dilutes the will of the individual, for the benefit of the whole and rightfully so. But a lot of people vote from a team perspective—like complacent lemmings. Straight-ticket voters want to win and will vote for their team just like they support their favorite football or baseball team. Living vicariously through a sports team is one thing, but voting for people who make incredibly important decisions based on what “team” they belong to is, to me, just plain stupid.

Ask yourself, “Do I really want anybody making decisions that directly affect my personal wellbeing, who is a coward, self-serving, or stupid?” Why then do we continue to elect and reelect people who make decisions that directly affect our personal and collective wellbeing who so obviously make those decisions based on what is either politically or financially advantageous for themselves or one of the two major political parties?

There are many rules and regulations that could govern a fair and equal electoral process, if those in positions of authority had the wherewithal and/or courage to implement them. But incumbents won’t change because in our system there is no reason for them to change. When a person gets elected to public office, regardless of how well meaning they might be, the first decision they tend to make is how to get reelected. The next decision is how to tow the party line. The next decision after that is how to keep their base happy and then, and only then, the last decision is how to satisfy the constituency. So go the priorities for every Democrat and Republican.

To me, the first priority for every elected official should be [italic] to make decisions that benefit the whole of their constituency regardless of how difficult those decisions are and whether or not they are good for their respective parties and whether or not they will get reelected.

Remedy in Reform, Action

We the people have to accept responsibility for our monumental governmental failures. The people elected by the citizenry are a direct reflection of the apathy and ignorance that define the general populace. If we want change to happen in our government—in our democracy—then, we have to change not only the people who are elected to our legislatures, but also the way we elect them.

I submit that one of the answers to correcting the glaring errors of our current democratic government is to institute Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) in every state and for every election. This isn’t perfect either, but at the very least it ensures that those people getting voted into office directly reflect the will of at least 51 percent of the people who vote. This would help to legitimize our democracy. My hypothesis is that IRV would encourage more voter participation as well, if people actually learned how it worked.

In our current “democracy” most people won’t lift a finger to educate themselves about the issues or candidates. Their only political education stems from who and what they see most on TV commercials.***

American democracy will not change until the people change it. And that will only happen if and when every American citizen starts exercising their constitutional right and responsibility to educate themselves about the candidates and issues, and then vote accordingly. Corporate media fear-mongering must stop and the gates to an equal, open, and honest political arena must open. Democracy can work for America, but only if Americans start working for and by the guiding principles of fairness and equality that define a true democratic nation.

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Michael LaForest is a political novice who has campaigned for partisan office three times in Wisconsin and has been involved in third-party politics for over 20 years. He is running a write-in campaign for U.S. Senate and is a registered write-in candidate. He is a licensed counselor and works for a nonprofit program helping homeless veterans obtain permanent housing. He lives in Milwaukee with his partner, their foster children, and their little dog, Pinto.

Notes

*Keep in mind that the U.S. House of Representatives can circumvent any state election law and it doesn’t take much of an imagination to discern the real reasons that election laws seldom change. They don’t change unless they are advantageous for the Republicans or Democrats. This is most likely the only political ideology that the two major parties really agree on.

**Again, the U.S. House of Representatives has the authority to do this, but gives absolutely no consideration to this very simple democratic concept and instead consistently caves to the false notion that all Americans have the same opportunities to run for political office.

***This then leads to another failing of American democracy—the dumbing down of our population. There really is no incentive for Americans to learn who the candidates are or what the issues are, especially when the mass media force-feeds them with useless, political rhetoric on every channel for most of every hour of programming for months prior to any major election. Our democracy is nothing more or less than what corporate media institutions and powerful political parties want us to hear and believe.

Democracy requires service, sacrifice, education to make a good idea into reality

By Ben Klandrud

This July 4th, 2010, we celebrated our 234th national birthday. For most, this was a festive day marked by parades, concerts, and fireworks. It meant a day off of work, summer sun, and cookouts with traditional foods, like the beer brats and cold watermelon enjoyed by my family. American flags were prominently displayed, adorning homes and T-shirts. Independence Day has become more of a commercial holiday, like Halloween or Valentine’s Day, instead of a joyous time of remembrance and respect for those who’ve sacrificed to preserve this democracy and its freedoms.

I was asked by a friend to write about democracy. At first, I felt reluctant to share my perspectives on the topic because national ignorance and apathy is so pervasive that one in four Americans are unaware of what empire our founding fathers boldly declared independence from by signing their names to that pivotal document in Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776 (Note 1). But, how will awareness and appreciation for the American approach to government—democracy—increase if those who are knowledgeable don’t pass along our past?

By definition, democracy is a form of government that is “by the people and for the people,” (Note 2) meaning citizens elect their leaders. America is a republic, which specifically means citizens vote for representatives at both local (i.e., state) and national (i.e., federal) levels to run the government. Unlike most of the world, the freedom of speech in America encourages exchange and debate of ideas. This is not Iran; there is no reason to fear deadly retribution for those who openly oppose the establishment. Such freedom welcomes extremely opposite opinions on government.

Some American citizens believe in and promote reforms that will mean huge government oversight of, or control over, our personal and professional lives. These reforms are a slippery slope to socialism, where the entire community (read: the government) owns and controls the people’s means of production. Have such proponents forgotten the lessons of history? Have they not gleaned the grizzly lessons of Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Kim Jung Il’s North Korea, Castro’s Cuba, Pot’s Cambodia, and Chavez’ Venezuela? Socialist governments have all too often set the stage for totalitarian regimes antithetical to the principals of freedom we purport to cherish as Americans. When considering such reforms, we must guard against any that endanger the individual liberties fundamental to our democracy and guaranteed in our Constitution.

It is not enough to be labeled a democratic nation—her people must continuously maintain the spirit of democracy by challenging elected leaders to fulfill constituents’ wishes. Whenever ignored and/or defied, the population must be willing and able to enact consequences, namely removal from office. When citizens accept such responsibility for their democracy, government is at its most effective. As an Army officer, it is my responsibility to train and prepare soldiers for battle. That means we study war history, the enemy, and our equipment as we train our bodies and minds to function as a team for the ultimate goal: victory. Similarly, Americans either contribute to the success or failure of this country through their level of preparation for patriotic participation. From my viewpoint, Americans are responsible for the country’s progression in the following five ways: 1.) voting, 2.) personal integrity, 3.) sacrificial nature, 4.) commitment to education, and 5.) reliance on the creator.

The cornerstone of democracy is the people’s right to vote. The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence acknowledged voting as fundamental to freedom. Unfortunately, low voter turnout appears to be an ever-increasing trend in America. Even with impressive numbers of young people casting ballots, particularly for the charismatic and compelling Barack Obama, less than two of three eligible voters participated in the 2008 presidential election (Note 3). Concerning local elections not held in November, turnouts are typically abysmal.

It saddens me to report that voter apathy exists in the military as well. Many of my soldiers, mostly fresh out of high school, frankly confess that they choose not to vote because 1.) politics don’t interest them, 2.) they are uninformed about the issues and candidates, or 3.) feel one person’s vote is irrelevant. Incredibly, some of these have fought to liberate Iraqis from tyrannical rule, paving a path to their historical election of leaders in 2005.

Going to the polls and exercising one’s right to vote must be impressed upon our youth and exemplified by elders as the primary way to protect our democracy from decay through corruption. Of course, personal integrity among voters ensures high moral standards are set for chosen officials. When lying, cheating, and stealing are overlooked in national leaders’ lives and offices, citizens passively permit a shift in the balance of power, from themselves, the voters, to the government, via untrustworthy representatives. John Quincy Adams said it best, “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”

Another hallmark of a successful democratic nation is that its people are sacrificial. Every generation since the American Revolution has made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure freedom reigns. From the bloody battle at Bunker Hill to the brave firefighters who stormed the crumbling World Trade Center towers on 9/11, willingness to sacrifice one’s ordinary life for the greater good has always defined American heroes. Whether by military or public service, the need for volunteers is great. Without the work of courageous and unselfish patriots, democracy could not have been established here nor could it persist unto today. Remember JFK’s charge to citizens: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

Even before declaring independence from England, the literacy rate for adult white males in the 13 colonies was a minimum of 70 percent (Note 4). High literacy rates are connected to the country’s religious heritage; most people were Christians and regularly read the Bible. Prioritization of widespread, personal education carries on. Of countries that send their children to secondary school, the United States is among the top. For example, 94 percent of American children are enrolled in secondary school compared to just 32 percent in Africa, 55 percent in Asia, and 73 percent for Latin America and the Caribbean (Note 5). Citizens of this democracy need basic education, particularly for reading and comprehending our Constitution. Knowing it will undoubtedly inspire informed voting decisions as well as make charlatans, who seek public power for illegitimate purposes, easily recognizable.

Guardians of American democracy should humble themselves to seek wisdom and discernment from the Creator, just as George Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Frederick Douglas, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan. At the nation’s inception, Judeo-Christian beliefs and values were at the forefront of framer minds and writings. Recognition of God is clear when the founders concluded, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is this acknowledgement of God’s prominent place in our lives that pushes followers to live for God by loving one’s neighbors and enemies, choosing good over evil, and strengthening society through godly standards for everything—including governance.

If American democracy, as designed by the founders, is to persist for future generations, then today’s citizens must prepare themselves, as soldiers for battle, to defend our unique freedoms. Victory comes through informed votes cast by citizens of integrity who are willing to sacrifice time, comfort, and even life to preserve and protect rights endowed by God. Abe Lincoln encouraged mourners to keep to their cause of increasing freedom for all when he spoke the following in 1863 at Gettysburg: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Seriously consider the significance of Independence Day. Allow the spirit of patriotism to reside within you; demonstrate it through submission to God, service for fellow man, and defense of American democracy. Express love of country by flying the flag always and wearing red, white, and blue more than once a year. Educate yourself by regularly reading the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States. Vote every chance you get! Share our sacred history with family and friends. When citizens are dedicated to democracy, America continues to be “a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere” (Note 6).

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Ben Klandrud is a captain in the U.S. Army.

Notes
1 Marist Poll taken on July 3, 2010.
2 Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address given on November 19, 1863
3 Andy Barr, 2008 turnout shatters all records, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15306.html (November 5, 2008)
4 Lawrence A. Cremin American Education: The Colonial Experience, NY: Harper & Row, 1970.
5 UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children Special Edition: Celebrating 20 Years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 2009.
6 Ronald Reagan, 1974, echoing John Winthrop, 1630.

What is democracy?

This site will be updated by Election Day 2010. Thank you for your patience.


30October2010

Spring 2010 delay

Thank you for your patience. The Spring 2010 Democracy issue (What is democracy really and is it really a good idea?) will be uploaded, but not until early Summer 2010.

If you are interested in contributing an essay on the forthcoming topics of Humor, Music, Purpose, or God, please send an email query to platypus [dot] found [at] yahoo [dot] com. These are all broad areas of human import and await voices to explore them from unique angles, perhaps yours.

Please feel free to browse the existing essays that have been published here over the past two-plus years. Thanks for reading.

Exploring happiness, the threshold of human greatness

By Michael Timm

There's something about ascending particular stairwells that lingers vividly in my memory.

The stairs I climbed the very first time in Puno, Peru, heart racing from the altitude. Never before had I been winded simply walking up the stairs—but life at 3,000 meters will do that to someone whose lungs have developed along the shores of Lake Michigan. Those stairs were nothing special, simply poured concrete with one landing, but they occupy a unique place in the architecture of my memory.

I remember too the crooked stairs I climbed the first time in Oxford, England, sweating, lugging my luggage up the steep and narrow wooden switchbacks to my dorm, exhausted after spanning the Atlantic, but with much more oxygen than Peru. With each step, I was primed with the expectation of newness, prepared for a greatness not entirely my own, borrowed from those who had gone before me in this same space and shared with those I would soon meet from many other places.

My mind also still reserves space for those spiral stairs with the wrought-iron railing in Ripon, Wis. I don't remember the very first ascent, but indelible is the imprint of the many times going up and around that curve in the Harwood Memorial Union to the College Days newspaper office—assuming command, taking care of business, bearing the editorial board pizza or a bundle of papers warm from the press.

These stairwells remind me of the happiness of accomplishment. They mark out phase transitions in my life. Other stairwells have left important impressions as well, and I think it's partly because stairwells are not designed to be spaces where we stop and reflect or where we do deeply purposeful action. They are conduits between here and there, spaces we move through necessarily but without conscious appreciation, without the demands of an office or the comforts of home. We are becoming in stairwells, existing in states of transition. We are open.

I offer you, reader, four new stairwells to climb. Whether they lead to happiness, or turn you upside down as in an M.C. Escher print, is in large part up to you. But it's my hope that the ideas, connections, and experiences shared here will linger in those silent, pregnant spaces of your mind like a refreshing memory linked to your own process of becoming—whatever it is you choose to become.

*

What is happiness and how do we get it?

Bishop Richard Sklba discusses the topic of happiness by referencing the work of Thomas Aquinas, for whom happiness was central to organizing his philosophy, and then by unpacking three Semitic terms that eventually have been translated to English as blessed, peace, and justice. The roots of these terms transcend the individual, Sklba writes, emphasizing the need for the establishment of a proper, balanced relationship between individuals and the social whole where individuals work for the common good. Sklba argues these three elements are central to a Christian understanding of happiness, which is a thing that must be practiced to be real.

When a drunk driver crashed into Jason Haas, the impact sent shattered glass into his eye, his brain into shock, and his life into pieces. Almost a decade later, he's picked up those pieces and considers himself lucky to be alive—but he reminds us of the ancient wisdom of the Greek Solon that perhaps one's happiness should not be measured at all, if at all, until after one is dead and one's legacy clear. When Haas woke up from a coma after six weeks lying in a hospital bed, he believed part of him had died. But the part that elected to seize life again has since earned a degree, participated in his community, and started a new home. Is he a happy man?

Kevin Woodcock wrangles with the question of happiness by considering some of the greatest thinkers who have produced literature and philosophy. While respecting their intellectual rigor, Woodcock rejects those whose grand themes terminate in an abyss of meaninglessness. Instead, he considers the varied interests of German Renaissance man Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In Goethe's botanical writing, and infused into his fiction, Woodcock finds an appreciation for organicism—a way of looking at living entities not as closed things but as open processes where a plant, or a character, evolves according to its own innate pattern but is necessarily shaped by and made up of all the elements in its environment. The lesson Woodcock derives is that ultimately we're still in the driver's seat when it comes to finding or making happiness. He perceives a precious inner state of consciousness—an inner Buddha—that, if nurtured and respected, will grow in the world and not be stamped out by it.

Finally, Charles Oberweiser considers the pragmatism of happiness. As a volunteer coordinator, his job is to encourage and measure happiness among volunteer workers because happiness is a valuable recruitment and retention tool (his premise: unhappy volunteers won't return to do more work). Oberweiser has observed, however, that the process of volunteering often makes volunteers happy. At the same time, he suggests that we may fool ourselves into remembering we were happy during times when we wouldn't have reported that we were happy—suggesting that happiness, if it can be measured at all, demonstrates a fair amount of plasticity.

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In the year of my birth, 1982, Arthur C. Clarke published 2010: Odyssey Two, including the somewhat prophetic, somewhat ironic, statement, "A fin-de-siècle philosopher had once remarked—and been roundly denounced for his pains—that Walter Elias Disney had contributed more to genuine human happiness than all the religious teachers in history."

Just prior to the actual year 2010, I traveled with my family to Walt Disney World. Many of the throngs of people I observed there were frustrated, angry, tense, on edge—sometimes even manic. They had to get to the next attraction. They had to wait in line. They had to walk around in the rain in absurd plastic garbage bags. It wasn't how I would describe the happiest place on Earth.

At the same time, I observed the earnest desire of parents to provide happiness for their young children, and share in that happiness—or perhaps it was a desire to attain some happiness themselves, reliving some happiness remembered from their childhood. Nowhere was this as clear to me, nor the desire for happiness apparently as easily satisfied, as at Dumbo: the ride. I watched the Dumbo exit line for multiple cycles. Adults coming off tended to relax, their faces softened, their eyes brightened, holding the hands of mostly exuberant children—even the older kids demonstrated a positive emotional response. I think some of the adults were happy because they felt they'd succeeded—junior enjoyed the ride! This was a stairwell they could easily climb.

It's worth noting that all they did was go up in a fake baby elephant and spin around. Objectively, not much changed. You could have a comparable physical experience without too much trouble. But because they shared an expectation and an experience—they wanted to be happy and the details of the ride were simple enough so as not to interfere with the accomplishment of that dream—they created for themselves a kind of magic bubble. Their special status was reinforced by all those people on the ground waving up at them as they circled, the very center of attention but without either power or control.

In its simplicity and effectiveness, the circle of Dumbo reminds me of another circle—a delicate interweaving design tattooed on the inside of a waitress's forearm. I asked her what the tattoo signified. She said it was the beginning of a Buddhist prayer—the idea was that just by people looking at it, they could start to become better people.

What is happiness? How do we get it? Find a stairwell and climb it.

Michael Timm

23 January 2010

Milwaukee, Wis.

Milwaukee Anthropologist will next turn to the topic of democracy in the spring 2010 issue. If you have ideas on the nature of democracy—what it is, what it isn't, where's it's been, where it's going, if it's really a good idea, and if not what might replace or succeed it—query me by March 20 at platypus [dot] found [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Happiness: Ancient wisdom and modern hope

By Richard J. Sklba

As long as the human heart has experienced a glimmer of desire for something more than whatever might be at hand in the present reality, we have known the hope for happiness.

Happiness suggests something deeply desired and already possessed, at least to the degree that it can satisfy our basic needs and hopes. For some people that sum total is minimal and modest, but for others it may be vast and enormously extended. Some individuals are content with little material comfort or possessions, while the desire, or even greed, of others seems limitless! Western Amero-Europeans are often amazed at the happiness of people in Africa or South America who have so little by way of material possessions, yet live in such deep contentment and peace.

There is, therefore and inevitably, a deeply subjective dimension to such “happiness” and for that reason the state one calls “happy” is relative. This entails a cautionary warning, namely that happiness could even become pathological if the hunger is insatiable and unethically disrespectful of others.

Aquinas’ Investigation of Happiness

When renowned medieval scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) was organizing his take on the great questions of human thought and existence, he chose “Happiness / Beatitudo” as one of his organizing principles.[1] He took all the religious thinking from the first millennium of Christian writers, namely the biblical perspectives which had quickly become deeply permeated with Platonism—since after all, philosophy was invariably viewed by the ancient world as a way of life that included moral values—and mixed into the stew a healthy dose of Aristotelian philosophy. The result was a new philosophical realism within the big picture of human existence.

After exploring final human destiny (quaestio 1) in the dialectic method of a scholastic disputation, Aquinas moved to a consideration of the various things in which human happiness might consist (quaestio 2), the nature of such human happiness (quaestio 3), the things required for human happiness (quaestio 4), and finally the method of attaining happiness (quaestio 5). In his vast vision, Aquinas acknowledged a type of immediate personal happiness that could be found in a variety of created realities, such as the satisfaction of senses or the possession of material objects which provide comfort, security, and enjoyment. He insisted, however, that full and final human happiness can only be found in the possession of the knowledge of an ultimate being who is all good, and in total friendship with such a God. As a result, every portion of the cosmos was somehow subsumed into his understanding of fundamental happiness, which he viewed as somehow related to God. Such happiness is a gift freely given by God, he wrote, and beyond any human ability to achieve on one’s own.

Obviously, this Thomistic consideration is intimately related to religious faith and cannot be understood or achieved without that context. Not everyone possesses that viewpoint, however, and yet we see that people can be relatively happy if they possess what they need and want, whatever that may be.

Antidote to Rampant Individualism

More ancient than the philosophical synthesis of Thomas Aquinas, one might explore the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures to see if they can illumine a consideration of happiness. It was those same writings that formed the background for Aquinas’ reflections. These Scriptures bear ancient witness to the values of a Semitic culture, which was concrete rather than abstract. These Semitic and biblical values were brought into close connection with the happiness described by Aquinas. He presumed them and brought his philosophical categories to that task of logically organizing the ideas.

The writings we label “the Bible” are in fact an entire library of different writings: poems and songs, tales and parables, ancient myths and family legends together with literature of every sort. Woven throughout the entire body of the biblical writings, partially because of their Semitic origins, are some concepts and viewpoints very different from our own. Those of us who inhabit the “Western world” live within a culture of radical individualism. The French writer who visited the nascent United States of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, warned of this trait which he saw among the early pioneers and entrepreneurs. He foresaw that it could become a lethal disease if not watched carefully. This quality, though needed for creativity and progress, can also become the source of much unhappiness and social harm if unchecked or unlimited. Any happiness which this American civil virtue might provide could become (and at times has been) severely harmful to the social fabric.

There are antidotes to such rampant individualism, and some of them are in fact found in the biblical writings. They surface because the ancient world was primarily social in its thinking. Persons were first and foremost identified by their respective family or tribal character, and only secondarily viewed as individuals.

As I think about it, there are three concepts from the vast witness of the Judeao-Christian Scriptures that can provide an antidote to the excessive individuality of our culture. These three concepts are ways of describing the common good, and might offer some insight into the question of genuine human happiness.

Translating the Roots of Happiness

The first concept a Christian student of the Scriptures might bring forward as a contribution to the study of human happiness is the word that introduces the familiar Beatitudes from Christ’s Sermon of the Mount in Mathew’s Gospel, as in “Blessed are the poor in spirit…the merciful, etc.”[2] The English word blessed translates the Greek word makarios, which in turn attempts to capture the earlier original Hebrew expression עשר / ‘asher. The fundamental concept captured by those three words throughout their linguistic migrations—from in the Hebrew just mentioned and into its subsequent Greek translation—is twofold. The concept attempts to convey, on the one hand, a blessing or gift from outside the human person[3] and initially beyond human control and, on the other hand, the subsequent emotional delight of that same person as a result of the fact that the gift has been bestowed, received, and gratefully welcomed.

Some of the traditional English translations seem very inadequate to the richness of the idea itself if they only stress one aspect or the other. For example, if one should choose to render ‘asher / makarios  as “happy,” one captures the delighted and positive emotion from the gift, but not that the source of the happiness is from outside and beyond the person herself. Conversely, if someone prefers to invoke the traditional English version “blessed,” that choice would seem to accent the opposite, namely that the source of the gift is from without, while virtually ignoring the ensuing emotional state of the human recipient. The best choice seems (at least to me) “fortunate,” because the latter catches both the giftedness of the state and the positive enjoyment experienced by the happy person.

(People are proclaimed “fortunate,” or happy, if they understand that all is gift; if they learn how to live with their personal sorrows without anger, bitterness, or resentment; and are able to avoid being “full of themselves” when reaching out to others. The familiar Beatitudes offer an insight into the factors that could enable a person to be truly “blessed” or “happy.” Thomas Aquinas would readily understand that the Scriptures offer illumination and insight into true human happiness. A truly happy person, therefore, is one who accepts the gift of insight and wisdom with joy.)

A second useful concept from the biblical literature of ancient Israel would be that of שלום / shalom, which is usually translated simply as “peace.” The inner notion for this word, however, is profound and much more nuanced than our familiar American usage might suggest. For us Americans and Western Europeans, the word peace is usually presumed to be the equivalent of tranquility and the absence of noise or distracting cacophony, as in “Thank goodness! The kids are in bed and we finally have some peace and quiet around here!” In the Semitic culture, however, the true sense of “peace” is one of reconciling separated elements, or regrouping disparate parts of an entity which had been splintered or scattered. Like a jigsaw puzzle where all the individual pieces finally fit together again, one experiences happiness when one’s individual gifts are placed in a context which best fits the needs and talents of each person, and thus the entire common good. The same Hebrew concept shalom can mean prosperity, wealth, or health, especially when each category of thought or experience describes a situation in which various parts and facts are reintegrated into a healthy functioning reality.

(Internationally, peace occurs when warring groups are restored to their proper mutual relationship. The attendant noise level is quite irrelevant. Whenever all things are back in their proper place, therefore, and in their proper relationship with everything else, there is true peace. This is another manner of approaching the human notion of happiness.)

The third and final concept I would raise from Israel’s biblical witness because, at least in my judgment, it can contribute greatly to true happiness is that of justice. Often in our pragmatic world we imagine that justice is achieved when an individual has paid all one’s debts. Biblical justice, however, is once again a much larger and more comprehensive notion. Fundamentally, biblical justice, namely צדקה / tzedeqah, means being in right relationship with everything else. A recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel[4] highlighted the feast of Hanukkah, which had begun the night before, and reported the delightful efforts of local Milwaukee Jewish children to collect money for the needy. The reporter quoted a local Jewish leader as suggesting that the word could be translated as “charity.” In my judgment, however, that version seems woefully inadequate because charity would suggest an emotional affect for the needy. To the contrary, there is a universal aspect inherent in the original Semitic concept of tzedeqah / justice which includes every bit of reality—animal and mineral as well as social and human—and asserts the quality of being in right relationship with everything! I would suggest that one is truly happy if one is in that sort of right relationship with everything and everyone.

There are undoubtedly other notions within the ancient traditions of Scripture that highlight some aspect of human happiness. These three Semitic words and their inherent frames of reference might seem to singularly contribute to an authentic human happiness. Each presumes, as you can see, a basic social structure or network of relationships. The larger reality of multiple relationships and individual reintegration is a nonnegotiable for the type of happiness described in the Scriptures. Recognition of the common good and a sense of shared responsibility for that common good is assumed to be a portion of human happiness.

Only when a person transcends his or her own individual tastes and preoccupations can he or she begin to find true happiness. The various proverbs collected over the centuries by the sages of Israel also describe happiness within the Semitic frame of reference.[5] They are always worthy of review, but the three concepts explained above seem more precisely targeted toward authentic human happiness.

May those who seek such happiness find it as a gift from God which they welcome warmly in order to place that gift in turn at the service of family, friends, and neighbors! Only in the context of a social context can human happiness be experienced and achieved.

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Richard J. Sklba is Auxiliary Bishop of Milwaukee, former professor of Scripture at St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, and past chair of the Catholic Bishops’ National Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

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[1]   Summa Theologica, pars Prima Secundae, questiones 1-5. The Pars Prima of the work begins with establishing the truly scientific character of theology, then moves to a treatise on creation and the ongoing divine governance of the world. Thus having laid the necessary logical foundation, Thomas Aquinas raises the question of human happiness.

[2]   Matthew 5:1-12. There is a similar and possibly more original form of the Beatitudes found in Luke 6:21-26. Both versions use the same introductory term “Blessed.”

[3]   This external aspect of the word is evident in the fact that the same root cognate means material riches and wealth.

[4]  Local section, 11 December 2009, B1.

[5]   See the Book of Proverbs 10ff.

Happiness—only known after trauma, or death?

By Jason Haas

An inquiry of this sort must first pay a visit to the text of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. In his history of the Greco-Persian Wars of the fifth century B.C.E., Herodotus devoted a fair bit of writing to King Croesus of Lydia. The story bears repeating for those not familiar with it. By Herodotus' account, Croesus was one of the wealthiest individuals in the ancient Western world, and the king believed this wealth gave him a commensurate happiness. This view was challenged when Croesus received Solon the wise Athenian as a guest in his palace. After Solon was shown the king's vast treasuries over the period of four days, an audience with the king awaited. There, King Croesus asked Solon for his opinion on who was the happiest man in the world.

Solon answered, "Tellus of Athens, sire." Flabbergasted that he had not been declared the happiest, Croesus demanded Solon's justification. Solon answered that Tellus was happiest for having lived in a flourishing land and seeing both of his sons grow to adulthood. (Whether Tellus had daughters was not reported, or relevant, to Herodotus). Tellus then surpassed most by dying, not of old age, but in battle against a neighboring state. He was given a public funeral, one of the highest honors in ancient Athens. Content in his life and vaunted after his death, Tellus bore the legacy of a great and truly happy man.

Croesus demanded to know who Solon thought was the second happiest man in the world, overly confident that Solon would name him after seeing his immense treasury. Instead, Solon pronounced the names Cleobis and Bito. Each of these brothers had been a victor at the Olympic games, and had personally pulled a cart bearing their mother to a festival of the goddess Hera! This act was seen in such a good light that their mother asked the goddess to "bestow on Cleobis and Bito, the sons who had so mightily honoured her, the highest blessing to which mortals can attain." After prayers, animal sacrifice, and a holy banquet, the young men fell asleep there in the temple. From this sleep, they never awoke, for they had been spirited away by the goddess as a reward for their selfless task.

Still amazed to find himself yet excluded from the Solon’s list of the happiest of men, Croesus pressed Solon for his reasoning. Solon explained, "He who unites the greatest number of advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death, then dies peaceably, that man alone, sire, is, in my judgment, entitled to bear the name of 'happy.' But in every matter it behooves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes the gods give men a gleam of happiness, and then plunge them into ruin."

By Solon's standard, Croesus was a man of great fortune, which was different from having great happiness. In essence, Solon said, Do not judge a person as being happy until they are dead. For only then can such judgment be pronounced.

In that light, I find it curious that the question on the nature of happiness should come to me. Once, in all but the literal biological sense, I think that I have died. Or at very least, I came closer to death than any living being should ever want to.

Dead, Almost, and After

On the evening of March 10, 2000, I was sitting at a red light in Savannah, Ga., when a drunk driver rammed a huge SUV into my very small, older car.

He hit me. My chest smashed the steering wheel. My head bashed through the windshield. My face was torn and lacerated, my nose smashed, and my left eye was shredded. That the sheer force of the impact damaged my internal organs almost seems like an afterthought.

Despite this, I did not die.

The next time that I remember waking up and being aware of the world was at least a month later. I didn't know where I was, or for that matter, who I was—though that came back soon enough. Still, six weeks of my life are gone thanks to the stupidity of the young man who drove his daddy’s huge car after a hard night’s drinking.

How, then, does surviving this horror make me a happy man—no, a content man—today?

While I have been receiving monetary compensation for the crash from the fool who hit me, I got no great joy from depositing the checks. It hardly needs to be said that no money could replace my eye, or make up for the painful eternity that the aftermath of the crash must have been for my wife and family. While I got a trifling check to cover the estimated value of a 1989 Honda Civic DX hatchback, it is impossible to place a monetary value on the marriage that the crash had also destroyed. My now ex-wife Cassandra was true to her vows in caring for me in the long months afterward. Sadly, an overwhelming majority of couples who experience the great traumas that come through debilitating car crashes end in divorce, as did ours. Thus, money has not made for happiness after surviving my personal apocalypse.

Some time after the crash, I concluded that some part of me had died that night. While I was never clinically dead, the hospital that I was taken to kept me under deep sedation for somewhere between one to two weeks. Even if I had been awake, my brain was so bollixed by the crash that it was incapable of storing memories of that time. And my body was so wrecked that it would have been a waking hell to dwell in it. I was kept in a drug-induced coma while my body pulled itself back from the brink, and kept my swollen brain from being moved and further injured.

In short, I survived. No funeral was held, no memorial placard or flowers placed at the intersection where that cretin tried to drive through me. But in my mind's eye, I had died. For about a month, I have absolutely no memory of being in the world. While life certainly went on around me, with family members visiting and taking pictures I don’t remember being taken. According to the hospital, I was never dead, as I later walked out alive. (Or at least rolled out in a wheelchair that they insisted on putting me in en route to my wife’s car.) Though she later would disagree with my assertion, my then-wife held a "re-birthday party" for me on March 10, 2001. My friends were very glad to see me alive and generally well, as was I.

As you may well imagine, this sort of event will cause you to take stock of your life and look very carefully at where and how you will try to head next. I thought that meant coming back to Madison, Wis., the city I had left in 1998 due to frustration with living there without having a college degree, which meant I could not get a good job. Now, nine years after that fateful crash, and five years after moving to Milwaukee, I have earned my undergraduate degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. For I had learned that one of the best things I could do to keep my brain in shape in the long run was to complete a college education. Academically speaking, I flourished. I argued in my senior thesis that Germany’s fate in the First World War was a result of an inadequate food supply, which led to significant unrest on the home front. It was a genuine pleasure to receive top grades on that paper, having been unable to think about anything but the great pain in my body just a few years earlier. And thanks to a professor who whipped her students’ brains into shape with critical thinking exercises, as well as the whole academic process, my brain feels in better shape than ever before.

I still see the result of the crash every day as I look upon the world. My left eye can still see, though it cannot focus on anything—the eye surgeon had to remove the lens in order to remove all of the windshield glass. I’ve had a touch shorter temper since then as well; such is the result of being hit from behind by a 6,000-pound blunt instrument. Despite that, I have largely flourished. It’s not often that you have your face pressed up against (or through) the glass of life and live to tell about it.

The fool who hit me went on to become a Princeton graduate and Wall Street economist. And he is the lucky recipient of 30 days a summer in the Chatham County, Georgia jail. I believe he will be completing his sentence in the summer of 2010. This knowledge gives me a satisfaction that justice has been performed, but just as Solon advised King Croesus that he would find no true happiness from his wealth, I gain no particular happiness from the monetary compensation I have gained from the crash.

Instead, my deep contentment comes from my friends and family, and from knowing that I live in a place that, while ridden with deep problems, enables me to explore matters such as this, while not fearing the repressive hand of the government or the blow of a terrorist’s bomb. For that matter, I do not often fear a repeat of the personal tragedy of March 10, 2000. It may happen, it always could happen. But there is no reason to live in active fear of that. Perhaps that is it: Having seen some of the worst a person can do, yet having survived and dramatically recovered, I fear not what other bad things could happen. Instead, I have the liberation of knowing how limited our presence here can be, and seek to make the best of it for myself, my family, and those around us in the city of Milwaukee. As Solon described the life of Tellus of Athens, whom he thought was the happiest man in the world, I seek to help Milwaukee flourish again, and to see my children grow to adulthood.

That said, judge me not yet a happy man. For I am still alive—and very happy about it!

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Jason Haas is a resident of Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood. After studying history, he often relishes not knowing what comes next.

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Herodotus quotations from The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, translated by Andrea L. Purvis and edited by Robert B. Strassler.

Search for growth, not necessarily truth

By Kevin Woodcock

Generally speaking, we in the modern and postmodern eras have a problem with happiness. Our philosophers, poets, and novelists tend to keep any sense of fulfillment at arm's length, suspicious that giving in to happiness or settling into a sense of fulfillment—or even meaning—is only falling for one of the bits of the world that remains to be disabused.

For instance, in his On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche’s conception of society is completely void of hope and happiness. In this same line, Gustave Flaubert famously claimed that in order to be happy you have to be stupid. Charles Taylor cites the ubiquitous malaise that runs through the veins of our society. And Max Weber went so far as to say that we can never expect to find any sort of meaning in our lives as everything we do is only an endless progression of expiration, of discovering the problems with our previously held beliefs, pushing them off to the side and then moving on.

One might ask—How in God’s name did these thinkers persevere with such morose perspectives on life? Indeed, how do we get out of bed in the morning knowing that we can never find meaning in our lives?

I will admit, at times I find myself sympathizing with these modes of thought. As a citizen of late capitalism, I bear witness to the fabrication of happiness for marketing purposes which has become inextricably tied to commodity culture. I would also have to agree with the likes of Descartes and Weber that we will forever be searching for truths, but this is where I feel I must part with these individuals. While these things maybe true, I do not necessarily concede that they preclude happiness. On the contrary, I believe happiness is possible even in a society as inauthentic and misguided as our own.

I'd like to touch on two thinkers whose ideas allow us a way out of the postmodern rationalist trap. The first is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German naturalist, poet, playwright, novelist—truly one of the last actual Renaissance men. The second is still with us, the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

Goethe & Organicism

Goethe's botanical writings are actually of primary interest in the discussion of happiness. Remarkably, Goethe produced over 8,000 drawings detailing the growth of plants with a focus on capturing the way their development assimilated their surroundings, embodying the very world in which they lived. Essentially, his theories coincided with organicism, which stresses the subject’s process of organization as opposed to, say, only focusing on its composition. For instance, a plant is the seed, water, soil, light, air, and so on, but it's also the continual organizing of external things. It is the light that just barely ekes through the window that makes the plant bend toward it, and it is the cold winter that makes it drop its leaves. All of these aspects are assimilated by the plant. One could say the plant is in a constant state of “becoming,” always subsuming what it engages with.

In his novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Goethe applied this theory to human life. The protagonist, Wilhelm Meister, begins the novel as a fiery youth convinced that his drive and love of theater will propel him to become a master playwright. As the story unfolds, Wilhelm stumbles over and over again until he begins to assimilate the lessons of life. In doing so, he “grows,” so to speak. By the end of the novel, Wilhelm looks back on his forays into failed endeavors (he eventually quits the theater), and the lesson is that those experiences were anything but meaningless. Those experiences made him into the strong and able individual who we finally see at the end of the novel.

Without a doubt, Wilhelm was allowed to be happy. He was not happy all the time, but this organic development granted him genuinely happy moments. His journey was not defined by an ambition to expose the world, but by growth and experiences brought about by his own volition. It is true that he received guidance, but for the most part his passions and inclinations dictated his actions while the world continually fine-tuned those passions. For Wilhelm at least, Max Weber was wrong: all the character's experiences and previous false suppositions about the world were anything but meaningless. In fact, it was those very missteps that led him to where he was by the end of the novel. Therefore—at least in the world according to Goethe—everything has meaning; happiness can be genuine and legitimate until it's proven incorrect, and even when that happens, the happiness was still real in its time.

For Goethe, engagement with the world should start on the inside and then move to the external. What does this actually mean? I sum it up in this way: Follow your own inclinations and, following them, then allow yourself to be molded by the world. Like Goethe’s plants that start with a seed and then grow and begin to bend toward sources of light, people too should allow themselves to follow their own will, and then remain receptive to the world’s vicissitudes and adjust accordingly. In living this way, meaning and beliefs can be preserved while room is also made for happiness. There's no need to buckle under the crippling skepticism of the philosophers mentioned earlier. There need be no presupposition that happiness or meaning is out of reach. On the contrary, the goal isn't uncovering truth, just growth.

The Dalai Lama & Mindset

Who or what is doing the growing and how might we encourage such growth? In a highly popular text, The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, psychiatrist Howard Cutler converses with the Dalai Lama on aspects of Tibetan Buddhism that can be applied to Western ideals pertaining to happiness.

In one notable passage, Cutler and the Dalai Lama expound on how one’s mindset is paramount to happiness. In one example, they discuss the lives of two individuals. One wins the lottery, becomes rich and is initially elated, but then the happiness subsides, and the person returns to her normal state. Another individual is diagnosed with HIV, but the long-term effect is one largely of positive change as things in life take on greater meaning. The lesson in all of this, the two authors argue, is that happiness is profoundly determined by one’s mindset rather than external factors. The Dalai Lama goes on to say that wealth and health are crucial to an extent, but they will only make us happy if our mind is in the right state to receive them. In a way, this is quite similar to Goethe’s organicism. For both, the mindset, the inner state, remains the primary driver of things, rather than the external conditions of the world, as is the case for, say, Nietzsche or Flaubert.

The primary objective in Buddhism is to reveal the inner Buddha who resides in every living being. In order to do so, one must gradually become enlightened, which leads to greater happiness, compassion, and presence of mind. Again, this seems strikingly similar to Goethe’s organicism. Unlike in most Western traditions, the self is what grows in the world as opposed to what must completely conform to the state of the world.

To think about this in terms of meaning, if we allow ourselves to grow according to what we think is right, enlightened, or holy, it is quite easy to find meaning in things. If, on the other hand, we see that knowledge is ever changing and assume that because of this we can never allow ourselves to see meaning in things, we preclude ourselves from ever having profound meaning or, consequently, happiness.

A Subtle Subjective Shift

In presenting the ideas of Goethe and the Dalai Lama, I’m aware of many counterarguments that I do not have room to acknowledge in this essay. My aim was simply to show what happens if we shift the way we engage with the world from a perspective that largely focuses on our distrust of things to one that is focused on the continual growth of ourselves. The subtle shift from focusing on the external nature of the world to examining the way our inner nature engages with the world creates more meaning and is surely an option to keep in mind as we search for happiness.

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Kevin Woodcock is completing his MA in Liberal Studies at Duke University. His interests are postmodern literature, economics, philosophy, and classical music.