đ Happy Valentineâs Day Interactors đ
Welcome to week two of weekly posts. These posts are intended to be topical and relevant to current events, but also tied to the larger theme of the season and the month. Itâs February and Iâm looking at âThe Geography of Whitenessâ. Itâs winter so the focus is human behavior. Itâs also Black History Month, and Iâm White. So, Iâm looking at what it means to be âWhiteâ and what is unique about âWhiteâ behavior in âAmericaâ. What is it about the interaction between people and place that has led us here and where do we go from here?
Valentineâs Day is two days away, so this post centers on âloveâ. Or lack thereof.
As interactors, youâre not only special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey, youâre also members of an attentive community. I welcome your participation. Interplace is a place for people to interact so please leave your comments below.
Now letâs goâŚ
Ok, be honest. When you hear the song, âWhat the World Need Now is Loveâ, do you think of Jackie Deshannon, Burt Bacharach, or Dionne Warwick? (put your answer in the comments below) If you ask me, itâs Dionne Warwick â even though she turned it down at first. âToo countryâ, she said, but changed her mind a year later. The rest is history, sweet history. But letâs give props to Jackie. She hit number seven on Billboardâs Hot 100 in 1965, just a few months before I was born. The world needed love and out I came. You can thank my parents.
That song was written in response to the Vietnam War by Burt and Hal David. But it became more of a protest song in 1971 when LA DJ Tom Clay mixed it with spoken word and Dionâs Abraham, Martin and John. It hit number eight on the Hot 100. Itâs both a war protest song and a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Kennedyâs â a poignant and depressing reflection of just how messed up our country was at the time. The most jarring part of the song comes at the beginning when a man asks a young girl what bigotry is â a term she had trouble defining and pronouncing. But when he asks what the word âprejudiceâ means, sheâs unequivocal: âI think itâs when somebody is sick.â
Our country was sick back then. We were pretty sick last summer too â police brutality and racial protests had echoes of the late sixties. But at least we didnât have a massive war, draft, and assignations every few months. Instead, we had a pandemic. And we still do. Our countryâs temperature, like the planet, is rising. The truth is weâve always had a low grade fever. When it has spiked itâs been abated with fever reducers to keep us from overheating: placate the natives with treaties negated, abolish enslavement â then toss âem on the pavement, Civil War reconstruction with redlined obstruction, a womanâs right to vote but donât dare promote, the New Deal pact, Civil Rights Act, and our first Black president, Barack. Iâm sure I skipped some meds in there somewhere. The fever has never left us. Itâs like mainstream medical practice. Weâd rather treat symptoms with drugs, than root causes with care.
âThere is no painkiller as effective as love, no anti-depressant as soothing as cheer, no defibrillator as powerful as wisdom.â â Abhijit Naskar, Time to Save Medicine
But whatâs love got to do with it? And who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? Tina Turner hit number one with âWhatâs Love Got to Do with Itâ as I was handed my high school diploma in 1984. The perfect theme song to launch a 40 year melodrama of merciless neoliberal policies and politics. Since the 80âs, our healthcare costs have risen while our life expectancy has lagged behind.
Forty years of âTrickle Down Economicsâ has resulted in the largest inequality gap in the world â hitting BIPOC homes the hardest. Nearly one quarter (21%) of children in the United States live in poverty â the worst among developed countries. The mantra of the 80s was, âGreed is Goodâ. Gordon Gekko inspired greed worked for some, but at the expense of many. And greed is one of Buddhismâs three evils:
Delusion/Ignorance;
Greed/Covetous;
Anger/Hatred.
That makes Trump not only a product of the 80s, but the personification of evil.
As the world was protesting in the street last summer, Tina Turner was teaming up with Norwegian DJ, Kygo, in a trip hop, tropical house remix of her big hit. It became number one in Poland and Hungary â two countries experiencing their own nationalist despotism. Perhaps itâs a neoconservative yearning for the good olâ days of 1980âs totalitarian rule. Tinaâs song barely made a dent in the US, but if it did I can imagine Trump spurring his crowds and insurrectionists in chanting, âWho needs a heart?! Who needs a heart?!â
What does love have to do with it, anyway? Everything, according to Finnish writer, Anu Partanen. Her book, âThe Nordic Theory of Everythingâ, centers on a Nordic tradition she calls the Nordic Theory of Love â the more love you give someone the more self-sufficient and independent they become. Go read or re-read Pippy Longstocking and youâll get the idea â warm hearted, compassionate, witty, and self-confident. Independent confidence sounds like Gordon Gekko, right? Partanen thinks so too:
âIf youâre a fan of American individualism and personal freedom, this might strike you downright all-American thinking.â
But true independence, she reveals, requires fellow citizens help those struggling so they can become self-sufficient â again. Compassion. Not Gordon Gekko. Not Trump. Not America. Partanen is married to an American and they lived in New York for some time. Upon moving back to Finland the disparity of how each country treats their people became so pronounced she wrote a book about it. Her conclusion is America believes love is just a second-hand emotion. Who needs a heart?
It got me wondering. How do Nordic countries remain the happiest places to live in the world while weâre one of the saddest. I feel you Czech Republic. Yes Nordic countries have social programs that insure a just, fair, and caring society, but theyâre also capitalist machines who celebrate personal freedoms and generate wealth. Itâs not that theyâre perfect. They have some immigration issues, their governments arenât perfect, and not all of their people are in uniform agreement. But compared to the wealth disparities and political polarities of America, there is much to be admired.
How did we get here? How did we get so tribal and divisive. Surely as Americans, as a people, as humans we canât be all that different from one another. Turns out weâre not the only species that acts this way. Weâre not that different, in our Darwinian dance, than massive colonies of warring ants. These little buggers are also notoriously tribal, building armies to defend against attacks. Scientists have even observed army reserves â lazy ants who just sit around doing nothing â waiting to be called upon should the colony lose too many soldiers in battle. But even within amazingly cooperative and efficient ant colonies, they see cliques form along behavioral lines. Angry aggressors self-congregate as do chilled-out peace keepers. So it seems even egalitarian insect colonies have polarized war mongering hawks and peace keeping doves.
Weâre a more evolved species with a bigger, but shrinking, brain. As a result, weâve devised elaborate social norms and societal patterns. Weâve also invented wheels, wagons, autos, and airplanes that move us about and scatter us throughout. Placemaking today is inspired by immigration, emigration, migration, and media. And explosive exponential population growth. In 2007 the world crossed the rural-urban line: 55% of the worldâs population now live in cities. When I was born, 66% of the worldâs population was rural. No wonder Dionne thought Burtâs song was too country. (Actually, US rural populations have remained flat at around 50 million since 1960.)
This growth means weâll be running into each other a lot more â once these masks come off. Those encounters will increasingly be with people that donât act, look, pray, or preach alike. And yet weâre all human beings with ambitions to live the best life we can. Deep down we know we should minimize hate, distrust, and violence. Especially if weâre going to coexist on top of each other. Together, as human beings, we have to find common ground. A moral safe space. Duke philosophy professor, Owen Flanagan, suggests in âThe Geography of Moralsâ that we start by asking what we ought to be:
ââŚthere are multiple ways to live good human lives; that morality is fragile, subject to vagaries of temperament, personality, gender, class, culture, economics, and politics; and that moral ideals are typically pictures of what kind of person from among the possibilities one ought to be, where âbeâ is intended in a deep, existentialist sense. Moral ideals call on one to be a person of a certain kind, not just to act in certain ways.â
Expanding cultural and ethnic orientations in cosmopolitan conglomerations will test our ability to âbeâ. It will also test our ability to make places for interactions between people of different races. There are various ways this worldwide experiment may play out â housing projects rife with prejudice and hate, a slow boiling cauldron of assimilated fate, or as Flanagan suggests,
âcollages of the best values, norms, and practices, the sociomoral equivalent of fine fusion cuisine or excellent world music that creates flavors or sounds from multiple fine sourcesâŚâ
I know which one sounds good to me.
To equip us all on this journey, he recommends we consider this:
They ainât from âround these parts. An admission that not everyone is from, or have had the same lived experience, as those from the âNorth Atlanticâ or its many colonized settlements.
âIt matters how members of original displaced communities, or people who were brought here or came here as chattel slaves or indentured workers or political refugees or for economic opportunity, have thought about virtues, values, moral psychology, normative ethics, and good human lives.â
I am so WEIRD. The majority of research into moral psychology comes from studying WEIRD people. (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic)
âThere is every reason to think WEIRD people are unrepresentative, possibly the most unrepresentative group imaginable, less representative than our ancestors when the ice melted at the end of the Pleistocene.â
Donât forget Buddha. As great as modern science is, itâs a mistake to claim these forms of knowledge are âbetterâ than the âsensitive observers of humans in their own times.â For example Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Buddha, Seneca, and ĹÄntideva. (Iâll add the many great indigenous thinkers and practitioners whose knowledge and experience has been passed down for millennia.)
He goes on to remind us WEIRD people are unique in the world. And not always in a good way. Flanagan assembled a dozen revelatory examples of how the fields of psychology, philosophy, and anthropology agree on the notion of âselfâ as derived from decades of collective research:
âThe Philosopherâs Selfâ. Â There is disagreement among social scientists, neuroscientists, and theologians about how we define âthe subject of experience, what I am, where I am, how I came to be, what my fate is, and how I keep track of all I am, do, as well as all that happens to me.â We all have different interpretations of âmeâ or âIâ in our heads and our brain is too feeble to fully make sense of a common âselfâ.
Independent versus Interdependent. All around the world different cultures tend to be more or less âindividualistsâ or âcollectivistsâ. âTypically North Americans and northern Europeans, on one side, and East Asians, South Asians, Amerindians, and Africans, on the other side.â
Wherever I go, there I am. This is what Americans consider their character. Think Meyers-Briggs. As a counter example, East Asians believe character is âmore dependent on particular situations and relationships, as co-constituted relationally.â
Whatâs your narrative? Some experts believe we act according to our own narrative â how we see ourselves in the world. Others believe itâs impossible to form our own narrative and that itâs imposed upon us by our culture. Anthropological evidence suggests it could be a bit of both.
Virtue. There is broad agreement that the idea of âquality of characterâ is something shared globally. But different parts of the world rank individual traits differently. Buddhists put Compassion first, whereas North Americans put âjustice as fairnessâ on top.
Ideal happy face. Assignment of an ideal happy state in facial gestures varies around the world. The ideal happy state in childrenâs books in North America would communicate high arousal; exuberance, âhappy-happy-joy-joyâ. The ideal in a Buddhist book would reflect âcalm, and endorse internal serenity and equanimity.â
Authentic and inauthentic selves. Authenticity matters more to North Americans. We tend to strive to be our âauthentic selvesâ no matter what. Just be yourself. Just do it. East Asians tend to believe that people of high character will forego their âauthentic selfâ when the situation demands a more collective approach. Egotistical versus communal.
Me, myself, and I. âWhen four- to six-year-old children in America and China are asked to report on daily events, the proportion of self-reference is three times greater among the Americans. American kids focus on what I did and what happened to me.â
Self-recognition. âNorth Americans believe that individuals can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps more than individuals in other cultures believe this, and are less likely to think that good or bad luck is a major factor in accomplishment.â
Self-comprehension. âIndians, Chinese, and Koreans are less susceptible than Americans to the fundamental attribution errorâŚâ When North Americans hand a homeless person money, weâre more likely to pat ourselves on the back for the good deed.
Self-serving bias. âNorth Americans are more prone than Amerindians, Mexicans, Fijians, Southern Italians, and East Asians to the self-serving biasâŚâ Think of Garrison Keillorâs âLake Wobegonâ effect â where everyone thinks they have above average intelligence, looks, etc.
Positive self-illusions. âNorth Americans are more prone than people of other cultures to believe that they are in control of outcomesâŚâ We like to think we can win the lottery, avert cancer, or get in a car accident. âIn North American populations only moderately depressed people are realists and do not suffer positive illusions.â
Flanagan punctuates this list by suggesting we all wake up:
âInsofar as there are some clear mistakes about the self on the list of self-variations, they are made disproportionately by WEIRD people rather than by the groups they are compared with. This ought to get our attention since tendencies to error, false beliefs, and the like, are generally thought, across the globe, to be a bad thing.â
Our countryâs cultural history is rooted in an unusual religiosity â puritanical capitalists who were largely racist, misogynistic, and mean. But we have to cut them some slack, because they âemerged in particular relations among particular people at a particular place and time.â However, elements of that legacy are evident today. Every day. America is a domineering, resource hungry, capitalist behemoth with a global ethnocentric agenda backed by a military bigger than the next 10 nations combined. We are bullies. Greed is good. Whatâs love got to with it?
And yet, the majority of Americans, especially kids, look around every day and see people of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds in their schools, workplaces, and streets. Despite our different origins, we see each other pursuing life, liberty, and happiness â even as we struggle to reconcile our ugly past â and present. We see protest, teamwork, allyship, and companionship. Civic discourse and introspective soul-search. We can honor our own lived experiences and beliefs while still being attentive to others.
âHuman individuals are gregarious social animals, in and of the world. All persons, WEIRD people as well as South Asian, Southeast Asian, East Asian, Eurasian, the original peoples of Africa, the Americas, and Oceana, are psychobiological individuals. Individuals have their own experiences. This is compatible with individuals in different communities being differentially open to other people, to being attentive or inattentive to suffering whenever and wherever it exists, to taking the well-being of others as seriously as their own.â â Owen Flanagan
We live in a world of plurality, but we know thereâs common ground. Is it too much to ask that we all strive to be kind, compassionate, fair, and just? There is no place for meanness and nobody likes a bully. A human theory of love is needed, though we wonât understand it fully. We are malleable creatures who can adapt to change, so let change begin.
âWe humans in virtue of being social, cultured, and very smart and because of the plasticity of human nature have numerous options for the kinds of persons we can be. It is an enormous responsibility to co-create ourselves, to choose the better paths, and nothing less that the quality of oneâs being and the contribution one makes to the well-being of others depends on how well one succeeds in this daunting project.â
In Tina Turnerâs hit single, she spends the first half of the song questioning the love of her lover. She asking him, âWhatâs love got to do with it?â Many of us are questioning the love of our country, our political, legal, economic structures, and each other. Itâs amplified on extreme left and right. Who needs Black Lives, when Black Lives are so broken. Who needs your laws, when your laws can be broken. Who needs a mask, when my freedom is chosen. So much anger, bitterness, and resentment. Delusion, greed, and anger.
But then her song turns inward. She stops yelling at the world, stops questioning love, and considers self-love â who she ought to âbeâ: âIâve got cause to be.â Even if itâs daunting:
âIâve been taking on a new direction â
And I have to say
I've been thinking 'bout my own protection
It scares me to feel this wayâ
Tina challenges us to be who we ought to be â to give love to one. While Dionne reminds us that when we do, we give love not to just some, but to everyone:
âWhat the world needs now
Is love, sweet love
No not just for some
But for everyoneâ
Banner photo credits: Dionne: discogs.com; Tina: dvdsreleasedates.com
Hearing "What the World Needs Now Is Love," I too think of Dionne Warwick. Similar themes are found in "Higher Love." Kygo produced a hit version of this song as well using Whitney Houston's vocal track. A couple of years ago my daughter "discovered" it. She had no idea who Steve Winwood was or that the song was a #1 hit during the Gordon Gecko 80s.
Brad; very interesting and thoughtful. I've spent a little time in Finland; Helsinki and rural/smaller city areas; I've been greatly impressed with the way that society thinks about caring for people and creating a place for everyone. It is also a culture of self-assured competency and modesty. where women have achieved much without the resentment of such so prevalent in some other societies.