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Gender and Language

~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments

Two years ago, following the death of my dog and cat several months earlier, I adopted a ten-year-old dark calico cat named Midnight.  I changed her name to Minuit (French for midnight) and began having a conversation in French with her every morning, fondly calling her “mon petit chat.”  Then I thought, wait, French is a gendered language.  Better check. Yup, I was unwittingly offending my cat by using the wrong gender. She is ”ma petite chatte. “

Gendered language issues are not new.  Back in the day long ago, a human being in English was man. A female human being was a wo-man.  A male human being was a wer-man.  Then the male human beings dropped the “wer” part, leaving us with centuries of confusion of who was included.  Are all men created equal? Does that include me?  Probably not, or the founders would have given me my justly deserved right to vote. One man, one vote? Man of the year (which finally became- thank you, Time magazine- person of the year).

Other distinctions were more subtle.  Is a female on stage or screen an actor or an actress?  Are you pleased that we no longer have stewardesses but instead flight attendants? Were those who fought for women’s right to vote suffragettes (-ette being a suffix meaning little, as in kitchenette or dinette) or suffragists (-ist being a suffix that denotes a supporter of a political position, as in communist, strict constructionist, capitalist, fascist, racist, sexist, leftist…)

Back in the 1960s, there was a frenzy over the title given to women.  Men were just Mr., unless they happened to be a doctor or a senator or a governor or something.  But women’s title was defined by marital status.  An unmarried woman, however old, was Miss (mademoiselle in the case of my cat). A married, divorced, or widowed woman was forever Mrs., an abbreviation for Mistress, indicating that she was-or at least at some point had been-attached to a male. I managed to partly escape that dilemma with at least some people by becoming Dr. Ulbrich, but the larger escape was the widespread use of Ms., indicating gender but not marital status.  (Pronunciation “Miz” is courtesy of the South, and it applies to all adult women regardless of marital status.) More recently, there was an effort to desex the terms for a person of Latin American heritage from Latino (male) or Latina (female) with the unpronounceable Latinx. Not a hit even among people of that particular ethnic heritage.

And now it is a “they-them-their” controversy, and I am an absolute troglodyte on that issue. While I am firmly on the side of LGBTQ rights, I find myself in a lot of company with others who are distressed over the chosen nonbinary pronouns of they, them, their.  (When asked, I assure people that my pronouns are still I, me, and mine). I do not think those rights need to include the use of a plural pronoun that takes a singular verb sometimes and not at other times, the bane of every English teacher. Yes, we do have a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun, but no one is suggesting “it” as a replacement.  A little creativity is called for.  How about sherm, herm, herms? Or a loan from another language?

In the meantime, at least my cat and I have gender clarity.  Even though she has been neutered, she is still a very female cat and doesn’t seem to object to being so identified.

Creating a Legacy

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

Once you have settled into your retirement plan, or your actual retirement or semi-retirement, there is one remaining important task of the later years.  That is to create, expand, and communicate your legacy. Obviously a will, healthcare power of attorney, and final wishes should be on that list.  And maybe even a draft obituary!

But legacy requires a bigger answer than that.  When you are gone, who will have the store of family stories and memories? How do you pass them on? What about your stuff?  What do you still want to do or accomplish that will influence the world around you once you are no longer present?  And how, in ways great or small, did you change the world for the better?

Let’s take up those items in no particular order.  Start with stuff.  It is really important to scale back the volume of stuff that your family or heirs have to take deal with. I know that well, having probated the states of my mother, my husband, and my best friend.  The first two were easy. The last involved no will, no immediate family other than eleven scattered cousins from Prince Edward Island to California, and house full of stuff.  You may live to be a hundred or be run over by a trailer truck tomorrow. Best not to procrastinate.  When I downsized our three-story house to a townhouse and cleaned out my “pack rat”: husband’s office and workshop, my children said, “thanks, Mom.”  It’ also a chance to give or promise things to family members or friends who will treasure them.  My middle daughter has already put in her request for the double bookcase build by her Dad (her sisters already have some of his pieces) and the desk that belonged to my great-great-grandfather, whose daughter marched for women’s suffrage.

What about the family stories and memories that you want to pass on so that your children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews and other survivors will be reminded of you and feel more aware of their place in the chain of humanity?  I am especially privileged to have a daughter who did the family genealogy and a mother and aunt who were great story tellers. One of my tasks for this year is to share those memories of my father with my half sister and her children. But I do regret not asking my aging family members to fill in some blanks in the stories of their lives.  I have no excuse.  My mother and her sister and my father’s sisters all lived well into their nineties. Don’t procrastinate. Ask them.  Particularly interesting is tracing passions, skills, gifts, and other characteristics. My great- great- grandmother was one of the few immigrants in my extensive New England family tree, a German whose occupation had been a washerwoman.  My aunt Marion, her great-grandchild, who died at 96, recalled her fondly and learned from her how to get any stain out of anything.  More common gifts helped me find why I, with little aptitude for art or music, raised an artist and a musician—we found the links scattered in both sides of the family tree.  I collected family stories, interspersed with pictures and dashes of genealogy, into a small bound volume called Stories for My Grandchildren.  My #3 granddaughter used to sit at the dining room table when she was very young and instead of asking me to read a story, she asked me to tell her another family story. Ask, listen, and share.

Finally, what footprints will you leave in the sands of time to guide or inspire those who follow? It does not require a Nobel prize or and Olympic medal.  This stage of life calls for two ways to leave a less concrete but perhaps more valuable legacy.  That legacy live on in those you cared for and/or mentored, in the communities and causes that you supported and served. Just think of the people who mentored and cared for you, who created and sustained the communities that nurtured you and worked for those goals and cases that you believed in, and ask yourself, what did I do in m lifetime to perpetuate those values, those skills, those communities, those noble goals? Keeping their memories alive in what you say and do will blend their legacy with yours. I kept the memory of my great-grandmother Alice Munger Stewart alive—she marched for women’s suffrage, I organized a local League of Women Voters and actively served at both the state and local level for most of the last 50 years.  So may people taught me how to be a teacher, a writer, facilitator, and I channel them all.  If you journal, or even if you don’t, take some time to write down the people to whom and for whom you are grateful and what gifts they gave you.. If you are still uncertain about your legacy, ask your friends, your relatives, or anyone else who knows you well.  Maybe even gather a group and tell each other what one another’s legacy is.

Legacy doesn’t take place over night.  As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Your life is the container of your legacy.  Spend some time identifying it, practicing it, and celebrating it.

The Last of Life III    Relationships and Communities

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

According to Jacob Schroder, summarizing a number of studies of retirees in Kiplinger Magazine in 2020, money is important to a joyful and meaningful retirement, but so are at least seven other things. He lists the following:

Working at staying healthy, fostering strong social connections, having a clear sense of meaning or purpose, never stop learning, cultivating optimism and practicing gratitude, and having a feathered or furry friend.[i] So far we have explored the transition in terms of meaning and purpose as well as habits and structure, which he doesn’t mention. This week we are focusing on what is for most of us an especially challenging aspect of aging that is exacerbated by retirement—your social and community life.

Many people move when they retire. They may want to be closer to family, move to a less expensive area, get away from the cold (or hot) weather. For some people (especially introverts) it is difficult to build a circle of friends in a new community and stay in meaningful contact with those you leave behind.  Dear Abby probably gets more variants on this question than any other. Some retirees divide their time between two locations (snowbirds) or change their minds as they get older and want to be closer to family and old friends. Retirement advisers recommend checking out your prospective new home—maybe rent for a year or check it out in out with the locals.

Those of us who retire in place have a somewhat easier challenge.  Even if we have good genes, work to stay healthy, cultivate optimism, practice gratitude, pet the cat or dog, and have meaning and purpose, we still must face the loss of friends and family over the years. I have friends who are divorced or widowed and friends with no adult children who find themselves spending more time alone and are looking for companionship. I knew this was ahead for me even though I live in a community with a lot of people I knew before retirement. I became a widow at 74 after a 53-year marriage. Most of my female relatives lived well into their 90s. When I paid my yearly visit to my beloved Aunt Marion the year before she died (at age 96), she said sadly, “I used to have a lot of friends, but they are all dead.” Even in the same community, friends die or move away. Friends from work drift away. If, like me, you move to a retirement community in the same town, you miss the neighbors, although retirement communities are good ways to meet people and make new friends. And if you have had a partner and that relationship ends through death or divorce, you soon find that your married friends are less inclined to socialize with you.

Family can be very important, but we were all taught to take responsibility for our own lives and to raise our children to be independent. Mine are. I am proud of them, but they lead busy lives and I don’t see them all that often, although I know they will be there for me if I need them. The grandchildren are all young adults with busy lives of their own. The last one is in college, and the others are working and planning for their futures. Motherhood is satisfying and meaningful, but it is a job you work your way out of, sometimes with a second shift when the grandchildren are young. So family matters, but most of us want companionship closer to our own age and without all the baggage of hanging out with someone whose diapers you used to change.

Girl Scouts sing this little ditty, “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.” It’s important to make the effort to keep in touch with old friends, and not just on Facebook (which I divorced three years ago). But it’s also important to have a strategy for making new friends. Living in a small college town, I often find myself a source of advice and suggestions on what to do, where to go, how to find your “people.” I am a religious and political liberal living in the red state South, so I learned early on how to find my people. My oldest daughter, who shares that outlook on life, did the same with different resources. (She has running friends, neighbor friends, and a national network of work-related colleagues.)  Some of these newcomers found me, and some of my newer friends are people I have mentored through the process. My longest-term friend in my current town has been with me for 58 years, knocking on my door to welcome me in 1966 as a fellow wife of a physics professor.  Most of my friends are close in age, most but not all are women.

Where did I find them?  At the time I wasn’t actively looking.  I have church friendships that resulted from wanting to raise my children in a faith community and sing in a church choir. I have friends from doing kid things like being a scout leader and carpooling. I was looking for a way to be active in nonpartisan politics in a very conservative state, so when I arrived in Clemson intent on joining the local League of Women Voters, only to find there wasn’t one—I started one.  Many of my lifelong friends were people I met that way. Intentional communities of all kinds—quilters, bridge groups, book clubs, pickleball—all are ways to meet people. Newcomers’ clubs in many communities help people to make friends. The town just down the road from mine, Anderson, has a group called ABC—Anderson By Choice—people who have moved there from distant places and decided to stay. Adult education programs are another resource—you can enjoy learning new skills and ideas while also meeting people who became friends. Volunteering is another way to meet people and make friends.

I have learned, despite my reserved New England upbringing, to suggest to someone who strikes me as friend material to go out for coffee, or lunch. For most of my life I waited for someone else to take the initiative, but now I sit down on Monday and ask myself, whom do I want to spend some time with this week? I also have a pool of friends to travel with, although there are more and more opportunities for solo travel. I belong to one group that meets weekly on Friday afternoon for wine and conversation and another that meets monthly for dinner and take turns being the speaker. (A bunch of retired academics, as you might guess!)

Some friends just happen, but someone has to take the initiative—first to meet, then to befriend and embark on a voyage of mutual discovery and adventure.  So pick a target and find something simple you can do together. And cultivate the relationship, check in from time to time, suggest an outing or a visit or lunch. Old friends, new friends, new communities will make your retirement life more satisfying and more meaningful for you and for your new friends.

[i] https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/happy-retirement/601160/7-surprisingly-valuable-assets-for-a-happy-retirement

The Last of Life II Structure and Habits

~ purplesage41 ~ 3 Comments

One of the most dramatic changes in retirement is the loss of external order and structure which has followed us from kindergarten on. Especially if there is no transition, we can find ourselves going from too little free time to too much.  Many new retirees fill their calendars with travel, bridge, volunteer work, gardening, or social events.  That stage lasts anywhere from six months to two years, by which time most people have either figured out a new pattern or, in some cases, gone back to work.

The challenge facing a retiree is to create their own order and structure.  One of the great insights of behavioral economics is that having too many choices is almost as bad as having none at all.  Economist Herbert Simon argued that what suits our human brains best is “bounded rationality”—making our choices about how to use our resources of time and money from a limited set of options.  Defining that set is one of the first tasks of retirement life. (He won a Nobel Prize in Economics for his work.)

There are several ways to create order and structure to free you from constantly fretting over what to do next. The key is to create habits—things that you do on specific days or at specific times. (I play Wordle and do a sudoku puzzle and the daily word jumble to jumpstart my brain each morning).  Exercise is a habit that is time constrained for some, flexible for others.  I used to go to Jazzercise three times a week at 8. During the pandemic I made a permanent shift to a thrice weekly neighborhood cardio class, while the other four days I do Jazzercise online at a convenient morning time.

About three years ago I set out on a determined effort to lose the weight I had acquired from some very difficult periods of my life, including the death of my husband of 53 years and my closest woman friend six months later. I tried a variety of approaches before choosing Noom, a weight management program based on cultivating new habits. Among those recommended habits are a 12-hour overnight fast, drinking more fluids, and only eating when you feel hungry. What I learned from Noon helped me adopt new habits in many dimensions of my life beyond eating, exercising, and weight management.

That broader application of changing habits really registered with me because I had been reading about the role of habits in freeing our attention from distractions and allowing us to focus. It’s kind of like downloading part of the brain to an external hard drive and letting certain parts of your day be driven by autopilot rather than a constant demand for choices. Being faced with too many choices, according to Simon, means either making poor choices or not choosing at all.

I was raised in a culture of habit.  Women like my mother often followed a regular schedule of meals, so they wouldn’t have to waste time each day planning dinner.  If this is Monday, we eat spaghetti.  They also followed a regular schedule of household chores. If this is Monday, it must be laundry day.  Wednesday? The weekly grocery shopping. My mother also made a habit of ironing five pieces a day, but that was before permanent press and clothes dryers. What I learned from her ironing habit was to break larger and more daunting tasks into manageable portions and do them over time rather than all at once.  For example, as a writer, I commit to at least 500 words a day.

I start each day at about 5 or 5:30 by writing in my journal (that doesn’t count toward the 500 words!), reading the newspaper online, checking my email, and laying out my plans for the day. Those plans normally include some practice of my vocation (writing, teaching,  mentoring, and organizational leadership), house and yard tasks and projects, exercise, connecting with others either as individuals or in a group , and learning.  Learning may be taking a class but more commonly is reading or watching a video on Wondrium, the streaming version of the Great Courses. And no, this blog is not a paid political endorsement for either Noon or Wondrium or Jazzercise.  They are just examples.

I make a point to include something that is fun most days—wine with a friend or friends, a walk in the Botanical garden, a play or concert.  Unless I have an evening meeting, I generally quit around five or 5:30 to have dinner, read, and watch television before going to bed at 9. I have always been early to bed, early to rise—no virtue there, just being aware of my biorhythm.

 I have changed my eating habits, but thanks to a friend who taught classes in downsizing I have also picked up a habit that gets me through the more tedious activities.  Set the timer for fifteen minutes and choose a task or a room or a project and do it for fifteen minutes. Cleaning a junk drawer. Vacuuming the rug. Cleaning the car. Weeding the garden.  When the bell rings on your smart watch or phone or oven timer, you can quit, or finish, or set it again.  

Those are my habits. They are probably not yours, although some of them (like the fifteen-minute timer) might be useful.  Rather, the  message is that retirement is an opportunity to identify, reconsider, and adapt your habits in ways that enrich your life. I invite you to create an order and structure that works for you while feeling free to take a day off now and then from part or all of it. Reworking your habits, one at a time, will enrich your life and free you from an externally imposed structure to create one that is uniquely yours Feel to comment with any tips of your own!

In my previous blog, I said there would be only two in this series.  I was wrong.  It is three. Or maybe four. Watch this space.

My Xantippe

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Xantippe was the wife of Greek philosopher.  The word “shrew” was one of the nicer words his friends used to describe her. He observed that if he were a horse trainer, he would choose a horse who was spirited and demanding so his skills would be challenged, not one that was docile and obedient.  Not that he ever tamed Xantippe, but he learned to tolerate, accept, and sometimes mollify her, skills that stood him in good stead for life outside the household.

What exactly is a Xantippe? To me it is a person who  is convinced that she or he (they come in both genders) is always right and can do what they please without considering who else has a right to be involved, or who might be adversely impacted by what they say or do. A loose cannon.  A tyrant. Bossy. Unwilling to listen.

I have had Xantippes in my life. (Fortunately, my late husband was not one of them, and even my mother-in-law —Xantippe-like as she seemed in the early days of our marriage—became a good friend before her untimely death in 1976). There may even have been times when I was someone else’s Xantippe, and I hope that I am astute enough to recognize when that happens, although I tend to be somewhat oblivious. So, when I encounter one of my Xantippes, I have to figure out how to deal constructively with her/him. My first instinct is avoidance, or at least minimizing direct contact. I can try to tactfully dissent, although that is seldom effective. But since I live in a Xantippe-like political environment, I cannot let some of the outrageous statements go unchallenged lest they think that silence means affirmation. After these encounters, I can retreat to my silo of like-minded friends and share my experience with them.

Jon Kabbat-Zinn, the Buddhist teacher, says that each of our children are little Buddhas sent to teach us what we need to learn. Perhaps the same is true of the Xantippe school teachers, the classmates, the neighbors, the colleagues that we encounter. What do my Xantippes—or yours—teach us?

Jesus told us not to make a big deal of the speck in our brother’s eye and ignore the giant piece of wood in our own. I think that is the first Xantippe lesson. All of us can have Xantippe moments or events when we are wedded to our idea, our plan, our understanding of the situation. We need to be aware of attacks of Xantippe-ness within.  Second, we don’t want to let a difference of opinion explode into global war, destroying relationships and communities, so a certain amount of toleration and patience is called for.  My homeowners’ association labored under two years of petty tyranny before that particular Xantippe grew weary and frustrated with complaints and dropped out of leadership, leaving things much more tranquil. Finally, pick your fights carefully and calmly state your position. It takes a Xantippe to help us develop and hone that skill.

My seminary friends used to describe having an FGE—a (blank) growth experience, leaving it to the reader to supply the missing F adjective. Think of the Xantippes in your life as endless providers of FGEs. If those experiences lead you to develop the necessary coping skills, you will be a better person and more able to cope with those other Xantippes lying in wait. 

Good Question

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After 50 years of teaching, I know what my response “good question” often means: It’s a way of saying that I don’t have a ready answer.  Sometimes my response was, let me check that out and get back to you next class. But the really good questions were not simple requests for information or even explanation.  They wanted me to go within and rethink something.  In all my years of teaching and learning, two questions stand out.

The first came from one of my favorite students, Peter, in a graduate class on ethics and public policy.  He asked me the difference between a virtue and a value. I had to chew on that one.  In the context of the course, my carefully thought-out answer was that sometimes a quality or attitude or behavior can be both a value and a virtue, and sometimes they are not.  Values are qualities of a good society, or a good marriage, or a good school, Values are social in nature. A virtue is a quality of a person.  Freedom, safety, and justice are values that we associate with a good state or nation.  Honesty, generosity, and compassion are personal virtues.  Justice is both a value (a just society) and a virtue (a just or fair person). Possessing or practicing that virtue can promote the values of whatever communities to which one belongs.  That distinction clarified my thinking in ways that were helpful to me and to my students.  It was a very good question.

Another good question came about at a church potluck.  I am a Unitarian Universalist, and as our name implies, most of us do not find the Trinity to be a meaningful part of our religious understanding. Kevin, sitting next to my, was a gay Catholic in search of a church home.  He asked, “If I was a Unitarian could I believe in God?” Since one of the seven principles that define our faith tradition is a free and responsible search for truth and meaning (a value), I assured him that the answer was Yes. Some of us do and some don’t, but we won’t tell you what to believe.  How about the Trinity, he asked?  Tougher question, and there was no next class coming, so I had to think on my feet.  Well, I said, it is not a common belief among us, but if you think of the Trinity as God beyond, God beside, God within, then it might fit better with the way most of us are inclined to think about the Trinity, if we think about it at all. Often a variant of these questions are asked of me as a Unitarian Universalist in the form of “Do you believe that Jesus was divine?” For that one I have a well-practiced answer.  “Yes, and so am I, and so are you, Jesus just got a bigger helping of divinity.”

My oldest daughter at the age of six asked me the standard question, Is Santa Claus really parents? Yes, I said, but we will still fill your stocking. Don’t tell your little sister yet, she’s only four. On through the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny, and finally, “How about God? Is he really parents?” “No,” I said, leaving the question one to be answered more fully at a later age.

For a couple of years, I had a friend with whom I had regular lunch and hiking visits.  What I treasured about her friendship was that she was always asking me questions like that, and I had to think through my answers.  We drifted apart, but I still remember her probing questions as being a core part of our friendship while it lasted.

Here is my question to you.  Two questions, in fact.  What questions—from a parent, a child, a teacher, a colleague, a student—have forced you to look within and come up with an answer that you had not already discovered? And do you return the favor, asking other people questions that encourage them to think deeper and harder about complicated questions of truth and meaning?

They Also Serve

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

This coming Saturday, I plan to visit a quilt show that takes place every other year up the road  in Seneca. (For those in the Upstate neighborhood, it’s at the Shaver Center on the 14th and 15th.) I am an occasional quilter, more of a seamstress. I was raised on my mother’s old treadle sewing machine, starting with doll clothes at age 7 and graduating to making most of my clothes, peaking with a wedding gown. Quilting, being more art and less utilitarian, came later. I took half a dozen classes and made everything from potholders to lap quilts. I was not gifted, but I was good enough to become and remain appreciative. Hence the quilt show.

I saw my first Shakespearian performance in high school and took a theater class in college, and that was enough to make me a lifelong theater fan. I passed that gift on to my youngest daughter during our sabbatical year in D.C. when she got to see lots of professional theater. I remain a live theater fan, and a proud supporter of my number three grandchild who majored in theater. I still muse about answering a casting call at my local amateur theater, but in the meantime, I attend four or five performances a year.

For thirty plus years I sang in church choirs, which are usually patient with imperfection. I had fairly decent pitch and could read music but was rhythmically challenged. I learned a lot from those years, especially how to find and sing the alto line, since my soprano voice from high school choir had dropped about an octave when I went back to choir in my 30s. I remain a fan of vocal music of all kinds—musical theater, choral groups, folk music. I go to concerts.

I am a good writer/speaker/preacher/teacher, and I appreciate a good and responsive audience. It was a long apprenticeship to become reasonably accomplished, although the desire to write and teach was clear in my childhood. I also enjoy listening to a good speaker and reading good writing, appreciating the craft at perhaps greater depth and being able to better discern the quality of the product. I can play both sides of that particular art form.

For music, theatre, art, and quilting, I am happy to be just part of an informed audience, someone who appreciates a visual or performing art that I know just enough about to catch the nuances and admire the effort and practice behind it. Being part of an audience is not passive. As Annie Dillard wrote, “We are here to abet creation and to witness to it…so that creation need not play to an empty house.”  Creativity is not limited to production. Taking on the role of engaged audience member is a gift to the artist. Find a way to give that gift this week.

Passionately Moderate In Print

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Almost three years ago I posted this blog about my book in process. The title is Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtue and Democracy. Now it’s in print, available in paperback or digital form from amazon. I hope you will buy a copy and urge your friends to do likewise. For those of you who are more recent subscribers, here is the original blog from 2020.

“How can you call yourself passionately moderate? I thought you were a liberal, ” my oldest daughter asks.  Yes, I answered, my personal preferences are liberal. Universal health care, a woman’s right to reproductive choice, a tax system that doesn’t favor the wealthy, affordable college and affordable housing…the list goes on. But I realize that a sizeable chunk of my city, state and nation subscribes to a different set of priorities and preferences, overlapping in some cases and diametrically opposite in others.  And even if my views were those of the majority, which they are in some cases, I don’t want to impose them on a frustrated and probably angry minority.  I am willing to compromise, to settle for the pretty good or even the good enough for now rather than holding out for the very best. I am passionate about openness to compromise, the give and take that means none of us get exactly what we want personally but what may be good enough, at least for now.  That makes me a liberal in theory and a moderate in practice.

Moderation lies at the core of the two academic disciplines I love the most and have taught to several generations of college students   I have a Ph.D. in economics from my early days and worked as an academic economist for 30 years.  Then I went to seminary and got a master’s degrees in theology with a concentration in ethics, which helped me to get my economic head and my theological heart on the same page. It also gave me the opportunity to teach ethics and public policy for 15 years to graduate students in policy studies because I was able to bring these two  disciplines together.

As both an economist and a theologian, I was interested in very practical questions about how we live our lives, and in particular, how we live in community.  For an economist, that means a focus on policy—making and implemented decisions that affect our material well-being in our common life.  For theology, my focus has been ethics, which was my concentration in seminary.  Theological ethics explores how our faith understanding guides our participation in governance in a democratic society. In the process of studying ethics, I fell in love with virtue ethics, which is not tied to any particular faith tradition but infuses all of them.

 The heart of Aristotelian virtue ethics, incorporated into late medieval scholasticism by Thomas Aquinas,  is moderation.  Moderation is fulcrum on which Aristotle’s golden mean rests. The golden mean, which we will explore further in later chapters, contends that each virtue lies at the midpoint between two vices (or sins, in Christian/Jewish language).  One vice is the virtue’s extreme, the other its opposite.  Aristotle’s notion of the golden mean fit perfectly into the decision processes of my economist mind and my progressive heart.

Thirty years ago, economist Alan Blinder wrote a book called Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, arguing that the Republicans were the party of hard heads, hard hearts, while the Democrats were the party of soft heads, soft hearts. What we needed, he argued, was hard heads and soft hearts–rational decision processes combined with compassion and empathy.The same dichotomy exists between economists and theologians—and in my head and heart.  It is in the middle meeting point that we engage both head and heart in dialogue with each other.

 The core of economic decision-making is also a balancing act, weighing costs and benefit, pain and pleasure, and steering a middle course rather than going to the extremes.  In fact, economics embodies utilitarian ethics, the greatest good for the greatest number.  It’s all about getting to get good outcomes.

Barry Goldwater got it wrong when, running for president in 1964, he said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue..” He lost in a landslide. Mderation, along with patience, is a more likely path to human flourishing than extremism. In political economy (the old name of economics, it is economics as a guide to public policy), moderation is not just a principle, it’s a survival strategy. The successful candidate is ever in search of the median voter, constantly resisting the pull of the extremes where few voters reside.  Yes, there is lure of standing tall for what you believe, whether it’s an extreme version of the second amendment or free college for all;  rigid and unyielding in the face of pressure to compromise. It’s high drama, and it was Bernie Sanders’ strategy in both 2016 and 2020 when he failed to get the Democratic nomination But it doesn’t create or sustain communities in which we can dwell together in peace and enable humans to be nurtured and flourish.   So if you value a healthy and sustainable human community, please consider join me in declaring yourself a passionate moderate. With this qualification from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Moderation in all things, including moderation.”

The golden mean applies not just to virtue, but to other qualities of being.  I have friends who are perfectionists, which is frustrating for them because it is impossible to always be perfect, and so often the perfect keeps us from getting to the good enough. Perfection is the opposite of moderation.  Carelessness, indifference, apatheia represent its extreme.  Most of us invest our perfectionism—if we have any—in just one or a few areas of life. W vacillate between appreciating the gift that perfectionists bring and exasperation at the lack of big picture, the delays while everything is revisited one more time.  I have worked with perfectionists, and it has never been easy for either of us.

My passion for moderation is a passion for process, not outcomes.  In order to practice moderation as a commitment to good process, you have to let your inner Buddha guide you in letting go of attachment to outcomes. I do believe that in most cases that good processes are more likely to lead to good outcomes. Not best outcomes. Not perfect outcomes.  But again, outcomes that are steps in the right direction, or good enough for now. 

Note: This blog is an excerpt from the opening chapter of a book in progress.

Enriched by Immigrants

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

Even as the Freedom Caucus and their MAGA friend demonize immigrants, it might be good to pause and give thanks for the immigrants in our lives.  Right now the most visible one is my DREAMer exercise instructor, from Mexico, who is a joy to sweat with. Then there are the people who come into my retirement community who tend lawns, clean houses, recover roofs, and work in the Health Care Center across the street.

A different set of immigrants enriched my education across cultures.  I worked with a  group of three women, married to graduate Students at Clemson University, from three different countries—Turkey, Libya, and China.  I was a volunteer teacher of ESL (English as a Second Language). They were all Muslims, all had ambitions—one wanted to be a dentist—and they were anxious to become sufficiently competent in English to pas the Graduate Record Exam.  I learned a lot about their religion, the family life, and their experience of the United States.  We spent one class practicing English by reading aloud from the college newspaper!

A larger group of immigrants who affected the way I experience the world were students in my graduate classes in policy studies from 2003 to 2017 who came from everywhere—Mexico, Uruguay, India, The Bahamas, Nigeria,  Angola, Burundi, Argentina, China, Thailand.  Both my behavioral economics class and my ethics and public policy class presented interesting cross-cultural challenges, because the way the economy works in the United States is quite different from heir experiences, and their cultures offered different perspectives on ethical questions. I also had to recognize that one student from Uruguay or Thailand was not necessarily a representative of the “species,” brought home when I had two students from Nigeria, one Catholic, one Muslim, disputing the issue of reproductive choice!

A final group that taught me some useful lessons were not immigrants but also definitely not Americans. They were suddenly liberated citizens of the former USSR, whom I encountered on a two week mission to Bulgaria in the 1990s after the fall of Communism. While my primary role was to help them sort out the role of local government in a market system, we also traded stereotypes and puzzlements about each other’s cultures. We got used to hearing from certain individuals who wanted to use the question and answer time to attack the evils of capitalism, and my partner Jim and I had a secret code when we thought that was coming. Th code was “central casting.” We invoked it when the speaker appeared to look and talk like someone sent over from central casting to play the Russian. During our final session, I was on question duty when a man spoke who was the spitting image of Nikita Khrushchev.  As the translator prepared to turn his question into English, I whispered to Jim, central casting! Not So. The question was, “who is in charge of parking in your cities and how much do they charge?” So much for stereotypes!

We need immigrants to fill the gaps in our labor force. We need them to teach us even as we teach them, and both be enriched by the encounter. We need to seek out more encounters with people who are different from us because we have useful perspectives to share as they do for us.

May you be blessed by the presence of the strangers among us, and help them to become strangers no more.