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Mothering and Letting Go

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

I know mothers who are deeply engaged in their children’s lives. I don’t mean mothers of young children or adolescents. I mean mothers of adults, children who have graduated from college, moved away from home, got married, and had children of their own.  I am happy for them and hope that there is much joy in their relationships. I love my daughters and granddaughters, but I am not that kind of mother, and I think the feeling is mutual.

The separation process is challenging for mothers and daughters. As daughter of a mother, mother of three daughters, and grandmother of four more, I have experienced it first and second-hand. My own mother lived to age 92, the last 25 after moving to the town where I lived and wanting to be more a part of my life than I was willing to accept.

It begins when an adolescent girl says in some way, I have my own vision of my future and it’s not the same as yours.  My mother, who was raised in a very post-Victorian world, thought that every woman should a) get married, have children, manage a household and expect a man to support her and b) acquire a marketable skill in case she needed to go back t work. Every girl of my generation heard the options: teacher, nurse, secretary.  When my mother offered those options to me at 15, I said, I think I will be an engineer. (Source: Sputnik had just leaped into space, and my father, from whom she had been separated for 13 years, was an engineer—although he had no involvement with our family. Eventually, I became an academic economist.) 

I wanted to marry and have children, but my focus was on a professional career, not a backup strategy. My mother was a social butterfly in high school, while I was a born academic who knocked the charts off standardized tests. I dated faithfully to appease my mother, but my heart wasn’t in it until I met my future husband in college. She also passed on the traditional belief that sons were more important because they carried on the family name and had to support their families, so it was especially important that they get an education, while it might be wasted by a woman.  Betty Friedan, where were you? (Fortunately, my brother was not academically inclined, and went to a technical high school instead. And I worked while in high school to save enough for two years of college, but scholarships took care of it anyway.)

That’s not an uncommon story of the women of my generation, the pre-boomers (I was born in 1941) and early boomers. It was easier for my daughters, who grew up with the expectation of careers and marriage and maybe children.

The other part of the story was conflicting values. My mother was understandably cautious, and not adventuresome. She didn’t get a driver’s license till she was 55, and flew on a plane for the first time in 1961 to visit her first grandchild. My sister and I were both counting the days to when we could leave our hometown and see the world. She was a Republican.  I always joked that she was so relieved that I came home from my first year of collage neither a Communist nor pregnant that she didn’t mind that I had become a Democrat. (Many years later she discovered that her social and political values were more Democratic than Republican.)

But in other ways I am my mother’s daughter. I have her sense of humor and passion for writing. I like to sing hymns around the house. I am a pretty good seamstress, a skill she taught me. I am a better, more adventurous cook than she would even consider being. I share her love but not her skill at growing plants.  She had a passion for politics which both of us inherited from her grandmother who marched for women’s suffrage in 1913. We both could play the piano by ear and loved cats, 

Before she arrived here in 1976, mother had lived with my brother and his wife, which did not work out well for anyone concerned. Over time, I managed to set boundaries that allowed us to peacefully coexist in my small Southern college town. The day she died, she confided to me that the last 25 years in this place 900 miles from home were the happiest years of her life. I worked hard to get her to let go of mothering me in order to enjoy what I have at age 82—the freedom  to restructure life after the intensive stage of mothering, to be myself again, to set my own schedule, to have a cordial and loving but non-invasive relationship with my daughters sons-in-law, and grandchildren but my own social life and my own friends, causes, and communities.

My daughters are almost there. The oldest had only one child, who is in a slow transition from college to finding her place in the world, but it is happening. My second daughter is married but has no children, although she is a much beloved aunt. I had a beloved aunt too, also without children, that my sister and I adored.  And my children had such an aunt too, although she did have two adopted sons. Perhaps at a certain age we need to cease being their mothers and become aunts instead!  My youngest daughter has three children and is still involved in their lives, but change is headed her way.  All my daughters have careers, adult friends, community activities, and supportive spouses.

I look back on my mother’s life, its challenges and disappointments, her identity defined primarily as a wife and mother and grandmother. I am grateful that I was born in the first generation of both-and instead of either-or, a professional career and a family. I am also grateful that I found a husband who clearly stated he did NOT want me to live vicariously through him (I said okay!). My life after parenting has been full of opportunities, challenges, and adventures. As a mother, I am grateful that my daughters could lead both/and lives, and that my granddaughters are all on track to do the same.

Many Happy Returns

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Monday, April 15th is Income Tax Day.  I expect many of you are devoting part of your weekend to filling out tax returns now that March Madness (with a bit of April thrown in) has come to its final conclusion.  Some of us actually enjoy the challenge of preparing our taxes, but most people dread the looming deadline.

My field of specialization as an economist is state and local public finance, so I take a deep interest in tax policy. Earlier this month I participated in an educational program for the North Carolina League of Women Voters on tax policy, and I have a return engagement in May as they try to figure out what constitutes good tax policy.  

Some forty years ago economists formulated the basic guidelines. A good tax system should be adequate, generating enough revenue to pay for the services that citizens need and want.  It should be equitable, fairly distributing the cost of government among citizens according to their ability to pay.  The revenue should keep pace with inflation because when prices rise, it affects the goods and services purchased by government. It should be designed to encourage people to do “good things” like buying electric vehicles and insulating their homes and getting an education and contributing to charity, and discourage them from doing “bad things” like smoking and driving gas guzzlers. Or things that the government wants them to do, like spend their tourist dollars in your state and resist the urge to shop in other states with lower sales taxes.  All those incentives come under the heading efficiency.

Back in the 1800s, an economist named Henry George was a big proponent of the single tax on land. Most contemporary economists would disagree, affirming the need for a variety of taxes.  Why? You have probably heard of portfolio theory, the basic idea being that you can reduce your risk without reducing your return on investment by having a variety of assets in your portfolio instead of just one. Some assets are reliable and steady in the earnings, others have the possibility of great returns.  Some are stable and steady in value while others are volatile. Some are easily converted to cash (liquid) while others are not. !) Some taxes are better suited to the federal level, others to the state level (all but five states have sales taxes), and mostly the property tax and fees for services at the local level. !) Some taxes are better suited to the federal level, others to the state level (all but five states have sales taxes), and mostly the property tax and fees for services at the local level.

Like an investment portfolio, a tax system needs to resist using too many kinds of taxes, because that would increase the state’s cost of collection and the individual’s or firm’s cost of compliance. (Cost of compliance is what you are encountering this weekend.,)

The income tax keeps pace with growth and inflation but drops sharply in recessions. It can be made progressive so that more of the tax burden falls on those more able to pay.  The sales tax is more stable and ensures that everyone contributes, but it is more burdensome on low-income households.  The property tax is the best source for local government because you can’t escape paying it by moving away—the land doesn’t move with you!  It is also used to pay for local services that benefit local property owners, including education, road maintenance, streetlights and law enforcement. Excise taxes target particular products or people—gas taxes paid by drivers are used to maintain the roads they drive on, tobacco taxes discourage smoking, alcohol taxes discourage drinking (maybe). Business taxes (and tax breaks) figure into state to state competition to attract and retain business firms.

 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” I mentioned that to one of my conservative economist colleagues and he said, “The price is too high.”  “Or perhaps,“ I said, “The amount of civilization is too low.” 

How much civilization do you want, and how much are you willing to pay for it?  Think about that the next time someone seeks your vote with a promise of a tax cut.  What services are we going to give up, or what debt burden will we increase to pass on to our grandchildren?

Saint Patrick and the Vernal Equinox

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In ancient times, especially among the Celts, there were eight holidays—four sky holidays (the equinoxes and solstices) and four earth holidays. These holidays were occasions of singing and dancing and music and feasting and bonfires. They helped to signal humans to align their body rhythms of sleeping and waking, working and resting, to longer or shorter days and warmer or cooler weather.

One of those holidays we celebrate this week.  It was known to the Celts as Ostara, named for the goddess of the dawn. In the more inhabited parts of the Northern hemisphere, it marked the official start of the season of spring. Equinox means that the sun is at the equator, headed north in spring, south in fall, and our days and nights are of equal length.  Actually, right here in upstate South Carolina, that happened on the 14th of March, with sunrise at 7:40 am and sunset at 7:40 pm. The official equinox falls on the 19th.

As the Christian faith spread out to lands largely populated by pagans of various kinds, church leaders soon found that people might be open to the New Faith but still were attached to their eight holiday celebrations.  The easiest response was to ‘baptize” some of the traditional holidays by giving them a Christian interpretation.  This accommodation was most obvious in celebrating the birth of Jesus (since there is no known official date of birth) at the time of Yul or the winter solstice.  Birth of the Sun, birth of the Son. A new beginning.  The customs were easily combined, although there are still some very pagan hymns in many Christian hymnals, notably The Holly and the Ivy and Deck the Halls. Another holiday, an earth holiday that for Celtic pagans marked the anticipation of winter, was Samhain, which became Halloween or All Hallows Eve.  For Christians, as the vegetation was dying and many of the farm animals were headed for slaughter, it was also a time to honor our dead.

A third holiday that attracted the attention of Christian missionaries was Ostara, the spring equinox.  A new beginning and rebirth offered an ideal time to celebrate the risen savior.   Many of the customs of Easter, which is a movable feast based on the full moon in relation to the equinox, are borrowed from the Celts and the Norse pagans, including eggs and rabbits and new clothes.  But Ostara remained, even though Easter acquired the pagan name for its own festival.

Ostara was a popular holiday as flowers began to bloom and the days grew noticeably longer.  The answer to the missionary’s prayer la in Saint Patrick, the young Welsh priest who brought Christianity to Ireland. Patrick was not overly concerned about their celebrating earth festivals with dancing and singing.  Many Celts were open to the New Faith but unwilling to divest themselves of their ancestral customs and celebrations.  The unique compromise? In choosing feast days to celebrate the major Catholic saints, there was rarely any defined birthday or death date to designate the celebration of the saint on a particular day.  What better choice of day for the Emerald Isle to celebrate Saint Patrick than the vernal equinox? The wearin’ of the green, the shamrock that he used to teach the Trinity, the green beer and singing and dancing and Irish blessings mark this very Irish holiday everywhere as a charming marriage of Catholic faith and its uniquely Irish interpretation.

Patrick, in the fifth and sixth centuries, was flexible.  He could marry Catholic doctrine to Irish/Celtic customs with no difficulty.  So you don’t have to be Catholic or pagan or even  Irish to seize the occasion and celebrate the arrival of spring. As the Irish say, may the wind always be at your back, and the road rise to meet you on your travels.

ESG and Me

~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments

A few days ago, I was in a gathering of some of my fellow retired academic colleagues from a variety of disciplines. Most if not all of the ten or so present seem to share my center-left politics—up to a point.  One of them asked me about Milton Friedman and his famous assertion that the sole responsibility of a corporation’s board of directors is to maximize shareholder wealth.  I gave my fairly standard economist reply, pointing to an erroneous interpretation of the Ford/Dodge Supreme Court decision in the 1930s and the more general historical meaning and purpose of a corporation charter in which they had certain public obligations in return for the opportunity for limited liability and eternal life (which definitely does not square with making them persons, as our current Supreme Court appears to believe). Two of my colleagues replied, isn’t that what you want them to do when you invest in a corporation—maximize your returns? No, I said, I want them to earn a fair return while acting like responsible corporate citizens, which is my reason for using ESG as a guideline in investing. At least two of them expressed surprise and perhaps even dismay at my response.

ESG as a criterion for investment decisions  has taken a lot of flak lately. Those three letters stand for environment (business practices that minimize environmental harm done in the process of producing a product or service), social (treating suppliers, employees, customers and communities as you would like to be treated in a role reversal), and governance (transparency and accountability).  Except in some  red states, where thanks to generations of underperforming public schools, people believe that these three letters spell WOKE.

There is some debate in the business literature about the relative performance of companies that Try to honor ESG in their corporate practices.  That’s a reasonable question to ask, but is it even relevant? If a company is destroying the environment, shortchanging its suppliers, extracting tax breaks from desperate local communities, exploiting its workers and deceiving its stockholders, but turning a nice profit, do you really want to encourage that kind of behavior? I will eventually get to the second in my three-part series on virtue. But don’t wait for that installment to think now about practicing virtue in your roles as stockholders, directors, management, customers, or board members. As a shareholder, you ae an owner, and as an owner, you are morally liable for the actions of that corporation, even if you aren’t legally liable.

I know that all of us are trying to swim to shore in a raging sea of information (and misinformation ) overload.  So I look for shortcuts.  ESG is one shortcut for at least increasing the likelihood of morally acceptable behavior.  Shopping with or working for B-corporations, who have accountability not just to shareholders but also  to workers, suppliers, customers and the surrounding  community spelled out in their corporate charters.

How and with whom we spend or invest our money is a measure of our values.  ESG makes the job of informed moral decision-making in the market easier for me. How about you?

A Torrent of Holidays

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I always like to write about holidays. (A gentle reminder of my book Economics Takes A Holiday!) February began with a couple of starter presidential primaries and Groundhog Day on the 2nd (historically celebrated by spring housecleaning), paused for Superbowl Sunday, then cruised on through Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday, Valentine’s Day on the 14th, and Presidents’ Day on the 19th. Easter and President’s Day are moveable feasts, especially Easter which falls March 31st, which moved Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday back into mid-February. President’s Day always falls between the 15th and the 21st of February, whichever is a Monday. It is also not the ever the birthday of either of the two presidents it was created to honor, Washington and Lincoln.   

 This confluence of holidays calls for exceptionally rapid costume changes of emotional attitude. The Superbowl was just two days before Mardi gras, Valentine’s Day coincided with Ash Wednesday, and before we knew it, there was Presidents Day. A quick change of pace from a fast-paced, loud, noisy football game watched by millions to a religious holiday marking a season of repentance and reflection interspersed with a celebration of romantic love and ending on a sharp reminder that we are in a very intense and perhaps even ominous presidential election year. From crocuses to Dust Thou art and to dust you shall return to Super Tuesday presidential primaries in just one short 29-day month.

 Unlike the Christmas holidays, each one called for a different kind of emotional response.  Valentine’s Day is lighthearted and sentimental, hearts and chocolates and flowers and cards.   Presidents’ Day invites us to be patriotic and closes the banks and the Post Office, and in many places, the schools.  There is also the invitation to shop at the Presidents’ Day sales, spending some of that green stuff with their pictures on the front. Mardi Gras is the final celebratory fling (the carnival, literally meaning farewell to meat) before Ash Wednesday. This holiday calls observant Christians to the austere penitential six weeks of Lent.  Even those of us whose faith traditions didn’t make a big deal out of Lent often feel compelled to join our high church comrades in giving something up for Lent.   Nothing like a holiday the celebrates self-denial. By Tuesday we will be in for a good rest with no significant holidays till Saint Patrick’s Day four weeks later. Whew!

All these holidays have a common element, however, and that element is hope.  Valentine’s Day which was originally a Roman holiday. The name of the month, February, refers to the fever of love. The earth is preparing to be fertile and humans are willing to go along with it by celebrating romantic love, even if it is only by watching reruns of Bridgerton on Netflix. Renewal of plant and animal life as we all start to emerge from winter’s hibernation is a source of hope.  As the weather warms, we can spend more time outdoors—walking, gardening, coffee on the patio. SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is banished until November. 

Presidential elections sometimes run on hope, sometimes on fear, most often (this year included) on a mixture of the two.  In a polarized nation, both the hopes and the fears are more intense. Theologian Joanna Macy reminds us that hope is useless unless it is active hope, a spur to invest our efforts in seeking out those candidates who best embody our vision of how our state, local, and federal governments should carry out that visionary hope. We can also hope for the future of our planet by engaging in sustainable lifestyles and inquiring of candidates what they propose to do about growth management and air and water pollution and global warming.

Finally, Mardi Gras and Lent are about letting go, turning one’s back on self-indulgence after one last fling and instead make an effort at cultivating the spirit. (In medieval times, it was also a way to stretch the food supply in the final months before spring crops began to come in.) It is long enough to change, short enough to see the light of Easter at the end of the Lenten tunnel. Just a manageable chunk of time to sustain the hope that by Easter, the holiday of renewal and rebirth, we will be reborn as better, wiser, more patient and less greedy and gluttonous than we were six weeks ago.  That’s a tall order, but we have to start somewhere.

AS we zip through these back-to-back holidays, let us celebrate hope.  Especially the hope that we have transformed into the practice of active hopefulness as we work toward bringing our hopes to fruition. In summer, this season of hope is followed by the season of joy, in autumn the season of wisdom, and in winter a season of rest and recovery. May the hopeful and challenging rhythms of the earth resonate in your body, mind, and soul this spring holiday season.

Habits of the Heart

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The title comes from a book by Sociologist Robert Bellah.  It is a good description of virtues. I am starting a new blog series about virtues, which will be interspersed with my more usual focus on holidays and culture and occasionally even economics.  I discovered virtue ethics in seminary, and it helped me understand the limited focus of traditional ethics, which is how to determine what is the right thing to do. Utilitarians want us to do what offers the greatest good for the greatest number.  Kantians urge us to follow an ethic of duty, which my ethics students reduced to the question, ”But what if everybody did it?”  (lied, stole, littered…). Armed with these two tools, ethics challenges people to make decisions that honor one or both of these principles.

But something was missing.  It was the question, “What makes people want to do the right thing?” The answer to that question lies in virtue ethics.  Or as Alfred B. Newman might have said, “Why be good?” And the answer from virtue ethics is, because you will be happier, have more friends and better relations, and the world will be a better place—especially if everybody did it.

The Greek word that Aristotle used, arete, is sometimes translated as virtue, but a more accurate translation is excellence. He believed that every virtue/excellence lies at a golden mean between its opposite and its extreme.  Courage, for example, lies between cowardice (its opposite) and foolhardiness (its extreme).  He also believed that the cultivation and exercise of virtue should lead to a richer and more meaningful life for the individual, the community, and society at large. 

There are lots and lots of virtues.  Auguste Comte-Sponville, a French ethicist, listed seventeen.  Aristotle had at least that many. But Aristotle focused on four that he considered primary, two for private life, two for public life. I’m pretty sure I’m not as smart as Aristotle, but I do have several millennia more of human experience to draw on in expanding his brilliant insight. Three spheres, not two—the individual, the community, the world..  And the virtues we require are, as Aristotle observed, different for those three sphere’s:  personal virtues, relational virtues, and civic virtues. 

Personal virtues are those qualities of character that make it easier to live with ourselves. Aristotle offered only two that were primary for our personal lives: prudence (wise management of resources) and temperance or moderation.  I would add diligence, patience, mindfulness. and self-awareness. Unlike relational or civic virtues, these six qualities of character primarily benefit us personally and directly in living richer, more meaningful and satisfying lives.

A prudent person is neither careless nor obsessive in the use of money and other resources, but gives it due attention, rather than hoarding or extravagance. A moderate or temperate person avoids the extremes of self-indulgence and asceticism. A diligent person is neither a goof-off nor a workaholic. A patient person avoids both endless procrastination and obsessive insistence on doing it NOW. A mindful person pays close attention to what she is doing in the moment, rather than focusing on the future or the past or being easily distracted. A self-aware person is cognizant of his gifts and strengths, limitations, and weaknesses, avoiding the extremes of pride and self-abasement. 

That’s a pretty comprehensive list.  I tend to be both impatient and easily distracted, so I have work on patience and mindfulness. I also need to work at self-awareness. On the other hand, I am reasonably prudent, moderate in most things, and generally diligent at carrying out my personal responsibilities.  At least, that’s what I think I am.  Periodically I need to check with friends and family members to see if they affirm or question my self-assessment!

Having identified my areas that need improvement, I am working on mindful eating, avoiding multi-tasking, and meditation to become more mindful. I have been keeping a journal for at least 25 years, and I have a friend whose task it is to find them and burn them when I die, because they are a tool for my self-awareness, not a record for future generations. As for patience, other people are pretty good at reminding me to slow down and let things unfold at their own pace.

How about you? That’s your ‘homework” for this week.  Which of these six personal virtues are your firmly established good habits of the heart and which ones could stand some work?

Sometime in the near future, expect Installment #2, when we will take a look at virtues that matter in relationships. (Patience gets a second chance there!)

Women’s Work

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I have been thinking about who are the people working to bring about the financial and political downfall of Trump. There is a panthean (note feminist spelling) of women. Liz Cheney. E. Jean Carroll. Letitia James. Fanni Willis. Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss. Nancy  Pelosi. Nikki Haley. Judge Chutkin. Cassidy Hutchinson.

The Latin word virtus (virtue) literally means manliness. (The made-up feminist equivalent, muliertus, doesn’t resonate very well!) Aristotle argued that there are four primary virtues, the private virtues of prudence and temperance or moderation, and the public virtues of courage and justice. (His Greek equivalent of virtus was arḗte, which translates as excellence, not manliness.)  A list of men possessing and exercising the primary public virtue of moral courage with respect to Trump would be a lot shorter. (Judge Erdogan. Jack Smith. Brad Raffensberger. Adam Kinzinger.)

Additional nominations welcome for both genders.

Our task as the middle and beyond generations is to encourage GenZ and millennials to show up at the polls, because in an era of toxic masculinity, they don’t vote like our generations do. I am working as a poll worker (6 am to 8 pm) in the South Carolina presidential on February 3rd and 24th, so it will be interesting to see who shows up.  My assignment is in a working class community, where I expect that African Americans will turn out to some degree in the Democratic primary while the numerous Trump-supporting evangelical “Christian” white angry aging folks will show up for the Republican primary.  I have to vote early 20 miles from home since I am not working in my own polling place, so in a few weeks I will be off to vote for Nikki, encouraging her to keep being a thorn in the flesh of the Donald.

My friends and blog followers, do what you can to mobilize what truly is the silent majority of our generation. My life at age 82 is much more past than future. On a personal level, I am trying to minimize any burden I leave for my daughters and grandchildren. On a communal/national/global level, I am trying to do what little I can to leave our children and heirs a safer, healthier, more livable world. Join me in trying to convince them to get engaged in the process of making that happen.

.

The Risk-Averse Voter

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Fifty years ago ,I was roped into teaching risk and insurance, a required course for several majors in the business school at Clemson University.  The insurance part was rather dull, but risk was interesting. Right now, I am thinking about the risks associated with voting strategy in the presidential primaries. The race has come down to Biden, Trump, and Haley.  How should one spend one’s single precious vote so as to contribute to the most desirable outcome in November? And what are the risks involved in making that choice?

In 2010, three friends of mine, all Democrats, voted in the Republican primary to try to select the candidate least likely to win in the general election. (South Carolina splits about 55-60% Republican and the rest Democrat. Voters do occasionally elect a Democrat to a statewide office.)  These three thoughtful women reasoned that South Carolina was a sexist, racist state (true) and that it would never elect an Indian woman.  They voted for Nikki Haley. It is a strategy they did not intend to apply again, but ironically, in this year’s presidential primary, they will be voting for—Nikki Haley.

What’s a voter to do? There are two parts to the strategy.  The first steps to rank your preferences Three are three candidates, which creates six possible preference rankings.

  1. Biden, Haley, Trump
  2. Biden, Trump, Haley
  3. Trump, Haley, Biden
  4. Trump, Biden, Haley
  5. Haley, Biden, Trump
  6. Haley, Trump, Biden

I find options 2 and 4 highly improbable.  Option 3 is easy, vote in the Republican primary for Trump.  No hard choices there. The same is true of options 5 and 6, to vote for Haley in the Republican primary.  If you prefer Haley or Trump to Biden, you vote for the preferred one in the Republican primary.  The challenge of risk assessment is only in option 1, the ordering Biden, Haley, Trump.  That voter is probably a Democrat or a Democrat-leaning independent. In some states, she can vote in either party’s primary.

If Biden is your first choice, there isn’t much need to vote in the Democratic for Biden because he will win anyway. Instead, you express your support by voting in the Republican primary for—which? The least electable one? The least dangerous one? Ah, there’s the rub.  The sense I get from talking to voters is that Haley runs stronger against Biden. but even the remote possibility of re-electing Trump would have much more serious consequences.   

Which one do you think has the lesser chance? Which one could you more easily live with if elected? If you strongly prefer Biden over either Republican, but could definitely rest easier with Haley on the ballot, that suggests you should vote for her.  But beware, she may be more electable—she’s attractive, articulate, and YOUNG. And very conservative. Whereas Trump may be able to energize his base but not much of anyone else.

Some Democrats will just vote for Biden, especially if they live in a state where the primary is limited to registered party members.  (I do have a good friend, a liberal Democrat in Florida, who called me last year to tell me that she is now a registered Republican. I understood her choice. She is not the only one taking that course!)  I live in an open primary state. I can simply walk in and say “I feel like a Democrat” or “I feel like a Republican.” 

Normally both party primaries are held at the same time and in the same place, saving money and poll worker time, but this year the Democratic National Committee gummed up the works, at least in South Carolina.  As a result, I will be working as a poll worker in both primaries in February and casting my own early ballot 20 miles away at the Easley public library. In all three places, I will be among voters chewing on the same dilemma. What are they risking by making this choice, and what might be the consequences?

Or they can stay home.  But as I used to say to some of my libertarian economist colleagues who thought voting was a waste of time, ”If you don’t vote, you lose your right to bitch.” That’s a First Amendment right that has to be earned.

What would you do, and why?

The Season of Hope

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Advent begins with hope, which continues as we move into a new year. We can choose our attitude. We can be optimistic, expecting that everything will turn out all right in the end. Yes, there is war in Gaza and Ukraine, and drought and famine and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and species extinction and rising sea levels and a crisis of democracy here and around the world. Optimists just shrug and are confident that all will be well in the end. No need to do anything different.

Pessimists reach the same conclusion from the opposite perspective. Nothing I do will make any difference. We are headed into a not so brave new world, one where we can’t believe what we hear and see, because of the failings of our institutions and the advent of artificial intelligence. So, let’s eat, and drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.

In between the extremes of unjustified optimism and defeatist pessimism lies the middle path of hope. But not just passive hope. Theologian Joanna Macy insists hope is worth no more than either pessimism or optimism unless it is active hope. What are you going to do to bring about a different, better outcome in 2024?

Some of our aspirations (also sometimes known as New Year’s resolutions) tend to be personal—like the perennial goals of eating better, watching less TV, getting more exercise, spending more time with friends and family, reading one hundred books. Those are fine goals, but notice that they are input goals, not output goals or results. If your aspiration is weight loss, for example, the experts tell us to focus on controlling your intake of food and your hours of exercise, not losing twenty pounds. You can only control inputs, not outcomes.

Your personal hope is a healthy body, mind and spirit. Active hope means identifying actions that we can take that will make those outcomes more likely.

The same advice applies to our hopes for our world, our nation, our communities. Yet, we need for our society—our communities, our nation, our world—the same identification of desired outcomes and actions we can undertake that make those outcomes more likely. My aspirations for the world are peace, justice, democracy, and sustainability. Those may not be your goals, but whatever hopes you have for the world, nation or community, the same advice applies.

Some of my inputs are personal choices that promote those goals—the way I deal with energy use, eating habits and gardening (organically), work for peaceful solutions to conflict in the family and the neighborhood, respect differences of opinion and seek common ground, and the way I stay informed about how my choices impact those aspirational goals so that I can choose more wisely. But they are not enough. I cannot save the world by recycling or other individual acts. They are necessary but not sufficient, as the mathematicians like to say. 

Perhaps you are familiar with Marge Piercy’s poem:

“Alone, you can fight,

You can refuse, you can

take what revenge you can

but they roll over you.

But two people fighting

back to back can cut through

a mob, snake-dancing file

Can break a cordon, an army can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other

sane, can give support, conviction,

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation,

a committee, a wedge. With four

you can play bridge and start

an organization….

Google the rest of it! Her point is that we are stronger and more effective in groups than as isolated individuals. Shared aspirations for a better future for ourselves and our children require a community. I would add a second point — Don’t go looking for the World Improvement Society. There are many changes that our world needs, and we can’t tackle them all at once. Find an organization that matches one or two of those aspirational goals, one which also matches your skills, experience, and knowledge (or a willingness to acquire them).

For me, the organizational choices were easy, made long ago. One group is focused, the other more general. My faith community shares all those aspirations and encourages us to work toward one or several of them in partnership with our brothers and sisters in faith. Other community organizations like the Rotary Club or a political party may be a better fit for some readers.

While I contribute financially to a wide range of “do-good” organizations at the local, state and national levels, the organization on which I have focused much of my “save the world” time and effort for the past 55 years is the League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voter matches my skills and experience and is primarily focused on democracy. You may be drawn to the Sierra Club, the ACLU, or some other organization that engages in direct action or lobbies for policy decisions that improve the world we live in.

When it comes to saving the world, what part of that agenda speaks to you, where does your particular passion meet your skills? What organized group of people can best help you channel your effort to making the world a better place both for us and future generations? How can you participate in that work?

Now that’s a New Year’s resolution worth making. Check back with me in 12 months and we will see how much progress we have made on our little piece of the action for a better future.