Sloth

Is sloth such a bad thing? Jesus bids us to,

“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin” (Luke 12:27, NRSV).

Those flowers sound pretty slothful.

In dealing with sloth, or any of the “deadly sins,” the point is not to squelch, repress, or exorcise the sin, but to understand why it’s there and to recognize its positive function. We all need to chill out, take a break, de-stress sometimes. There’s a lot to like about sloth.

We are here to create connection by helping each other to listen to our deepest selves, open to life’s gifts, and serve needs greater than our own. In our deepest self, we know that we, too, like the lillies, shine with a beauty that we do not have to earn, do not work for. It comes not from what we do but from just what we are.

Bertrand Russell’s 1932 essay, “In Praise of Idleness,” makes the positive case:

“I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.”

Long work days keep us from activities that are more fun and creative, and the economic productivity of work enriches the government, which uses that wealth to build up its military and fight wars. Thus, says Russell:

“The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.”

Playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s book on Sloth is a parody of self-help books. Her book within the book is called Sloth and How to Get It: A Guide to Living a Happy and Guilt-Free Slothful Life. In it, the authorial persona

“claims to have tried every self-improvement plan known to addled Americans, from the Atkins diet to getting in touch with her inner child, until discovering the solution, Sloth.”

The book lays out

“a program for achieving absolute indolence, the secret of a stress-free life....You have the right to be lazy. You can choose not to respond. You can choose not to move."

The vital first step in becoming a sloth is to

"break the cycle of excess energy and stored dreams. Sloth will release you from all the terrible shoulds dominating your life.”

The book tells how to become a sloth in your diet, exercise, work, and even love-life: it warns against true love, for that leads to passion, and passion is the biggest enemy of sloth.

The rapier of satire shows us the real issue at one point when it is describing the false prophets who would lead us astray from the salvation of sloth. One of these false prophets declares, “I don’t need to rest. I get high on life.” The book responds:

“This is bologna if I ever heard it. Who could possibly get high on life? In life, there is disease, random acts of violence, natural disasters, undisclosed fascist governments, not to mention world poverty and hunger. If you look life in the face, you couldn’t possibly get high on it. Even love fades. Once you adopt sloth, you are dealing with a responsible reaction to the truth about living.”

There in a flash the problem is exposed: disconnection. Confronted with disease, violence, oppression, injustice how do we not disconnect from life?

The spiritual calling is to stay present to life, even the hard parts. We are called to be a student assistant to life. The student assistant is ultimately not in charge, yet here to learn, and to help others.

In the final chapter of her book, Sloth, Wendy Wasserstein offers an ironic insight. She describes the "ubersloth" -- a person who

“achieve(s) slothdom in a subtle and camouflaging way.”

“Have you ever been lying on your couch, watching four well-groomed women of diverse ethnicities on television chatting about how they manage to get everything done? They call themselves ‘jugglers,’ and they’re all able to have husbands, children, careers, social causes, plus they exercise three hours a day, eat only vegetables, and employ personal stylists to tell them what to wear every morning. Or, have you ever seen a man on television talking about how he made $100 million before he was thirty, then walked from New York to China, directed three Oscar-winning movies, got married four times, each with better and better sex with a different gendered partner? In their outside façade, they are they anti-sloths – the doers and shakers. But just like in politics, where the extreme right and the extreme left meet, so in sloth the extremes merge into one another....Are these hyperscheduled, overactive individuals really creating anything new? Are they guilty of passion in any way? Do they have a new vision for their government? For their community? Or for themselves? Their purpose is to keep themselves so busy, so entrenched in their active lives, that their spirit reaches a permanent state of lethargiosis. In other words, their hyperactivity is no different than your or my slothfulness. Whether you’re a traditional sloth or a New Age ubersloth, we are all looking at the possibility of real thought, and rejecting it....For myself, stylistically, I prefer to remain on my couch. But the creative, spiritual, and political void of these new ubersloths makes me proud.”

We can disconnect from life and from ourselves by lethargic withdrawal. We can also disconnect from life and from ourselves through frenetic busy-ness.

The need, then is to lighten up on our preoccupations with work and worry and achievement, but without sinking into unremitting indolence. The middle way affords space for connecting to our life.

* * *
See also
The Seven Deadlies
Gluttony
Greed/Avarice
Anger/Wrath
Envy
Lust
Pride

Gluttony

Of the seven deadly sins, gluttony is the one with which we are most obsessed. Try going to a bookstore and telling an employee: “I’m looking for something that will help me with my problem of vanity. I suffer from pride and hubris, and I want some guidance on addressing that.” Or say you want to work on your envy, or sloth. A resourceful bookstore employee might be able point you to a few titles. If you say you want help with your lust, or your greed, you’ll mostly find titles giving advice on how to be more successful in gratifying these desires rather than in mitigating their control over your life. Tell the clerk you have an issue with anger, and you’ll have somewhat better luck -- there are several books about anger management. But if you say your problem is gluttony, then you have hit the mother lode. Bookstore shelves groan under the weight of title upon title of diet and weight-loss books to help you not groan under the weight of yourself.

While we don’t often use the word “gluttony” these days, we are a nation and a culture deeply obsessed with overeating and with body image. The Center for Disease Control says that in 1962, 13 percent of the US was obese. By 2010, 35.7 percent of US adults qualify as “obese.” We get judgmental about this. If obesity is a disease, then it differs from other diseases in the degree to which many of us blame those who suffer from it. There’s discrimination against the overweight, and the bias and judgmentalism gets mixed up with what might be legitimate concern about public health. There is a prevailing attitude that the obese are morally contemptible. Studies show, for instance, that employers

“not only tend to assume that a fat person will be less reliable, energetic, and efficient, but are reluctant to hire the overweight for positions (receptionists, etc.) in which their size might affront the delicate sensibilities of potential customers and the general public.” (Francine Prose, Gluttony)

On the other hand, there is, at the same time, a recognition that gluttony fundamentally affirms pleasure and passion. Diamond Jim Brady (1856 – 1917), railroad magnate of the gilded age, the story goes, “would begin his meal by sitting six inches from the table and would quit only when his stomach rubbed uncomfortably against the edge.” The life force, the appetite, the unrestrained gusto for the pleasure of life manifest in such prodigious feasting inspires a certain respect. The fastidious fasting, dieting self-deniers are not so fun to be around.

We have contradictory attitudes about eating. The book of Proverbs warns:

“Be not among winebibbers, among riotous eaters of flesh. For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.” (Proverbs 23: 20-21)

Yet in Ecclesiastes we read:

“Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart. For God has long ago approved what you do.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24)

Nowhere are the contradictions of our lives and of our culture more obvious than when it comes to eating and body image. During any given half-hour of commercial television, you will see advertisements for restaurants, and fatty foods, and cooking shows. You’ll also see ads for weight loss that imply that eating is tantamount to suicide, that indulgence and enjoyment lead to social isolation.

We like food. It feels good. We can get obsessed with it if we get focused on too much – if we want only the finest foods, and we want a lot of them, and we want them right now. We also fall into obsession when we focus too much on denying the desire. Either way, we are defining ourselves by our desire – and that is the root of what gluttony is all about: allowing ourselves to be defined by desires for gratification.

In the balanced life, we have desire, and we are OK with the fact that we have desire. Our desire gets a seat at the table (as it were). But desire doesn’t gain total control. The voice of desire is neither suppressed nor indulged.

Paying attention to the voice of desire can guide us to a place where we respectfully hear that voice, and then make our own decision. That’s what neither repressing nor indulging looks like: it looks like separating ourselves from our desire, not identifying with it -- stepping back from it, yet paying attention to it. We can learn to investigate our desires, asking “What is this desire? Where did it come from? What does it have to say to me? What other desires are alive in me?” Freedom is not immediately caving in to every desire. Nor is freedom steadfastly suppressing every desire.

Be attentive, not indulgent. Talk to yourself: “Oh, there you are, you attraction to that cheesecake. I feel you there, pulling at me. And I know you are coming from a worthwhile place: you want me to have pleasure and maybe some energy from the calories and a little sugar rush. You’re just trying to look out for me.” From there, you’re in a much better position to choose. Maybe you then take that cheesecake, and maybe you don’t. Maybe you work out a different strategy to meet the need that is being voiced in you. By neither repressing nor indulging you are liberated from being controlled by the desire.

Desire isn’t you. And it isn’t your enemy. It’s a dear friend who’s a lot of fun, but sometimes gets crazy ideas. It’s not your master, and it’s not your slave: it’s your friend. So when your friend proposes some wild scheme involving, say, chocolate, you laugh. And then you’re thoughtful. And then you can either say, “OK, let’s do it.” Or you can say, “Let’s do that later. Let’s do something else, right now.”

We all have an inner glutton. It’s one of our teachers, telling us to enjoy what this sweet life offers us. But with this teacher, we don’t have to do every single assignment. And we can decide for ourselves how much we want to be graded on (ahem) the curve.

* * *
See also
The Seven Deadlies
Sloth
Greed/Avarice
Anger/Wrath
Envy
Lust
Pride

The Seven Deadlies

There’s something about the number seven.
Seven days in a week.
Seven colors in a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet).
Pre-moderns counted seven celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn).
The earth, we learned in school, has seven continents (though, frankly, the basis for counting Europe as a separate continent from Asia is more cultural than geological).
Sail the seven seas and see the seven wonders of the world – before you get the seven-year itch.

Your phone number, not counting the area code, is seven digits. There’s a reason for this. Bell laboratories research in the 1950s found a steep drop-off between humans’ ability to recall a seven-digit number and ability to recall an eight-digit number. Perhaps seven is significant for us because of the way our brains are built.

“Countless psychological experiments have shown that, on average, the longest sequence a normal person can recall on the fly contains about seven items. This limit, which psychologists dubbed the "magical number seven" when they discovered it in the 1950s, is the typical capacity of what's called the brain's working memory.” (ABC News, 2009 Dec 6. HERE.)

We love to make lists of seven items. One of these is the seven deadly sins. Can you name them all? No, they are not, "Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful, Sneezy, Happy, and Doc." Those would be the seven dwarfs in the Disney "Snow White."

The seven deadly sins, as delineated by Pope Gregory I ("Gregory the Great") in the 6th century, are:

• anger (or wrath)
• lust
• gluttony
• sloth
• envy
• pride (or vanity)
• greed (or avarice)

Then there are the seven virtues, that also go back at least to the Middle Ages:

• prudence/wisdom
• justice
• temperance
• courage
• faith
• hope
• love

The first four derive from the writings of Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and came to be called the “cardinal virtues.” The last three, from Paul's letter to Corinthians, are called the “theological virtues.”

These seven virtues do not parallel the seven sins. Thus, a list called "the heavenly virtues" has also been made, providing direct antidotes to the seven deadly sins. To counteract anger, lust, gluttony, sloth, envy, vanity, and greed, respectively, are:

• patience
• chastity
• temperance
• diligence
• kindness
• humility
• charity/generosity

"Temperance" is on both virtue lists. The Latin caritas translates as both "love" and "charity," so we can say it's also on both lists. "Diligence," from the Latin industria, carries a connotation of fortitude, which carries a connotation of courage -- so maybe that's also on both lists. The other four -- "prudence/wisdom," "justice," "faith," and "hope," -- are replaced by "patience," "chastity," "kindness," and "humility."

In the 20th century, Mohandas Gandhi crafted his own list of seven social sins:

• Politics without Principle
• Wealth without Work
• Pleasure without Conscience
• Knowledge without Character
• Commerce without Morality
• Science without Humanity
• Worship without Sacrifice

In 2008, Pope Benedict, noticing that the traditional seven deadly sins were very individual and typically victimless (in and of themselves), followed Gandhi’s lead in making a list of seven social sins. Benedict’s seven social sins are:

• Drug abuse
• Polluting the environment
• Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
• Excessive wealth
• Creating poverty
• “Bioethical” violations such as birth control
• “Morally dubious'' experiments such as stem cell research

I was glad to see the Pope's interest in reducing the first five items, and I wished the last two items had been left off. Many better ways to bring the list to the magic number seven were available. Overconsumption of resources, exploitation of labor, undermining or failing to support: public education, full equality for girls and women, gun control, immigrant rights.... I have many helpful suggestions, and will return calls from the Vatican.

The temptation to make a seven-item list of special significance has not passed by the Unitarian Universalists either. We have our seven principles! (HERE) Some of us call them the seven lively principles to stand over against the seven deadly sins.

What motivated Pope Gregory I’s traditional list of seven deadly sins? And why those seven? After all, the seven deadly sins are not listed in the Jewish or Christian Bible. What is in the Bible are the Ten Commandments, the violations of which amounts to a list of sins: idolatry, swearing, sabbathlessness, filial disrespect, murder, adultery, theft, deceit, covetousness. (Count only nine? Some traditions split "idolatry" into two to get ten, and other traditions split "covetousness" into two. There's a handy table in Wikipedia's "Ten Commandments" entry: HERE.) Given the centrality of the Ten Commandments in our Judeo-Christian heritage, wouldn’t those be the main sins?

Maybe ten (or nine) is just too many to hold in working memory. Theologians might, then, have looked to the Book of Proverbs:

“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.” (Proverbs 6: 16-19)

There are seven, here – quite different from Gregory the Great’s list (only pride – “haughty eyes” – made the cut for Gregory). These seven, though, aren’t nicely encapsulated in a single word each.

In the New Testament, there’s a sin list in Galatians:

“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5: 19-21)

Despite these various Biblical sources for sin lists, early Christian thinkers felt a need to create a different list.

In the fourth century, Evagrius of Pontus, made a list of eight “evil thoughts.” He almost, but not quite, grasped that seven is the magic number. When, over two centuries after Evagrius wrote his list, Pope Gregory I created the seven-sin list that became so widely known, Gregory only had to do a little tweaking of Evagrius. Gregory kept "gluttony," "greed/avarice," and "anger/wrath" from Evagrius' list. Evagrius and Gregory both listed acedia, though, for Evagrius, the term meant dejection, while Gregory and subsequent writers explained the term in a way that gradually made "sloth" the better English translation. Evagrius had listed the actions, "prostitution and fornication," which Gregory replaced with the psychological state, "lust." Evagrius used the Greek work lype, which generally means sadness; Gregory shifted to a more specific focus on sadness related to comparing oneself to others, "envy." Evagrius had hubris and boasting (or vainglory) as two separate sins, which Gregory combined into one, "pride/vanity," thereby getting the list down to seven.

Saint John Cassian, shortly after Evagrius, also had a similar list of vices, leading up to Gregory stamping Papal imprimatur on “the seven deadly sins.” What these church leaders were trying to do was identify the root sins. The seven deadlies are not the most serious offenses. A little envy, or a touch of pride is not as serious as lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering. Rather, the seven deadlies were seen as the origins, the root causes, of the more serious sins. Envy, vanity, anger, sloth, lust, gluttony, or greed could lead you to lie, steal, or kill.

These early church figures were developing a kind of theological psychology. If a person could purge themselves of these seven, none of those other sins would tempt. Indeed, precisely because these seven so often occur in mild form, and are universal, or nearly so, the seven deadly sins constitute an agenda for spiritual work for everyone. The project of coming to terms with these root bedevilments of the human condition is necessary for our healing and wholeness.

We might quibble with Gregory the Great’s list. Idolatry, for instance – broadly defined as attachment to a fixed concept or image, to the detriment of open-ness to the dynamic freshness of each moment – is at the root of a lot our suffering, and in some ways may even be the root from which these other roots spring. Still, by and large, Pope Gregory has given us a good list, attention to which reveals insights of meaning, power, and possibilities of liberation.

But entirely purging any of these seven is neither necessary nor desirable. Indeed, we need every one of them, and for that reason, they are always with us -- our taunting companions, as theologian Phyllis Tickle calls them.

“These [seven] taunting companions of ours can prod us into well-being as well as destruction. Indeed, without them we will die just as because of them we are condemned to die.”

* * *
See also
Gluttony
Sloth
Greed/Avarice
Anger/Wrath
Envy
Lust
Pride

Free Speech on Campus

Free speech issues have been intensifying on American campuses.

In February:

"Protests that erupted at UC Berkeley ahead of a planned Wednesday appearance by right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos caused $100,000 worth of damage to the campus." (CNN, 2017 Feb 2)

In March:

"Last week, a guest lecture at Middlebury College by Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was disrupted by hundreds of student protesters. Allison Stanger, a political science professor at the college, subsequently interviewed Mr. Murray at an alternate location on campus. As they left the second venue, they were violently confronted by masked protesters, and Ms. Stanger was injured." (NYTimes, 2017 Mar 7)

In early April:

"Administrators expressed disappointment and threatened discipline in the wake of a demonstration that disrupted a planned public event last week featuring conservative commentator and author Heather MacDonald at Claremont McKenna College....About 250 protesters on Thursday blocked the entrance to the Athenaeum, where MacDonald was scheduled to appear. Many chanted “black lives matter” and “black lives — they matter here.” (LA Times, 2017 Apr 9)

And in mid-April:

"White nationalist Richard Spencer's speech at Alabama's Auburn University was preceded by controversy and punctuated Tuesday night by protests, arrests and some violence." (NPR, 2017 Apr 19)

Critics of the protesters deride them as intolerant. For example:

"On American campuses, fragile thugs who call themselves students shout down and abuse speakers on a weekly basis. To read Heather MacDonald’s account of being pilloried at Claremont McKenna College is to enter a world of chilling intolerance." (David Brooks)

About a year and a half ago The Liberal Pulpit wrote about "Resolving the Paradox of Tolerance." We argued then that policies of tolerance should aim to maximize the overall climate of tolerance. Some intolerance can be tolerated in the interest of maximizing the overall climate of tolerance, while other intolerance cannot be tolerated.

"It is necessary to limit some hateful expressions. Otherwise, the powerful haters will create a climate intolerant of views different from theirs....The question to ask ourselves is: Does the intolerance in question threaten the overall climate of tolerance? If it is not of such nature or power to have a reasonably discernible chill effect on other viewpoints, then allow it (though do share your criticisms of it). But if the vitriol is driving out other viewpoints, then, in the name of tolerance itself, it should not be tolerated. Every limitation on expression damages the overall climate of tolerance....Sometimes not curtailing certain expressions damages the climate of tolerance even more." (The Liberal Pulpit, 2015 Dec 14)

Following this approach, the question would be whether the speeches by Yiannopoulos, Murray, MacDonald, and Spencer, had they proceeded without protest, would have done more damage to the overall climate of tolerance than not allowing them to speak would do. The issue, however, is better cast as one of acceptance and respect than of tolerance. So is the climate of acceptance and respect degraded when a university gives Yiannopoulos, Murray, MacDonald, or Spencer a platform for their views? Is it degraded more by protests that block or hamper these speakers' expression?

To lay the ground of approach to these questions, some considerations:

First, the Miltonian ideal is delusion. British poet John Milton famously said in 1644:

"Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"

The problem here is that there never was nor ever can be any such thing as a "free and open encounter." Long before Milton, Aristotle had identified ethos, pathos, and logos as the modes of persuasion. The speaker's ethos (character and credibility) in the eyes of a given audience, always an essential factor in persuasion, is a reflection of dynamics of power that have nothing to do with truth and that inherently tilt the playing field. Pathos (rousing the audience's emotions), whether prominent or subtle, done effectively or not, is also always a factor, and adds constraints to every encounter. The background knowledge and experiences that audience members bring with them place significant restrictions on their persuadability. These are not the constraints and restrictions of "the truth of the matter" or "the way reality is," but tend more to be the constraints and restrictions of confirmation bias, ego defense, wishful thinking, and other manifestations or tools of power. If you had been imagining that invited speakers at universities are part of a system of "free and open encounters" from which Truth can never be "put to the worse," I urge you to stand disabused.

Second, "free marketplace of ideas" is not at issue. These speakers -- and, indeed, any speaker invited to speak on a college campus -- are not presenting otherwise unavailable thoughts. Rather they are further publicizing ideas they have already published. Moreover, the prominence of the internet ensures ready access to all manner of offensive expression. Given online connectivity, the free market of ideas can be in no danger, and has never offered so wide a range of wares so easily to so many.

Third, dehumanizing or delegitimizing groups of people reduces free speech. We cannot remove ethos from public discourse -- and, insofar as we can coherently imagine what that would be like, we wouldn't want to -- but we can reduce barriers to access to ethos based on group membership. Free speech is maximized when all members of a given community can participate as fully recognized members of that community. Speech that functions to diminish the character and credibility of others because of their membership in a racial, ethnic, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious group diminishes free speech.

A campus speaker who denies the holocaust, or who explicitly supports white supremacy, or who claims that trans people are really men and women in disguise (as Ben Carson has done) invalidates the humanity of some people. That's an overall reduction in the climate of acceptance and respect, and, as such, reduces free speech.

When our prestigious universities were populated entirely with middle- and upper-class, white, presumptively straight males, a guest lecturer committee would have been hard-pressed to find a speaker to invite to campus who would threaten the humanity, legitimacy, or belongingness of any portion of their audience. The world was so ordered as to make possessors of whiteness, maleness, and wealth so secure in their belongingness as to be unthreatenable. While the world is still largely ordered that way, universities now strive to be inclusive and diverse -- to be a home to members of groups not so secure. If the members of those groups are required, as a condition of entering discourse, to first defend their human worth, then the university has not provided all its members equal access to public speech.

These, I think, are the issues to which to attend in considering who to invite to speak on campus. Yiannopoulos and Spencer do more damage than good to campus free speech. As for Murray or MacDonald, I don't have an opinion on whether it would be better to debate them or not invite them -- but, since I'm a middle-class straight white cis-male, my own opinion on that is not the important one. We must listen to those whose human worth is more in jeopardy.

Left Snark, Right Snark

The Corruption of Our Democracy, part 3

Gerrymandering

With the use of computers and very precise neighborhood by neighborhood data – even household by household data – lawmakers carve intricate and fantastically convoluted districts to pack and crack: create a few districts and pack as many of the opposition voters into them, and then crack up the remaining opposition voters into districts where they can be easily outvoted. In the 2014 midterm elections, in both Pennsylvania and in North Carolina, democratic candidates got 44 percent of all votes cast for congress. Yet Democrats won only 27 percent of the seats in Pennsylvania and 23 percent in North Carolina.

Gerrymandering corrupts our democracy, and we could take steps to limit it. A computer program could draw district boundaries such that each district contains the same population and the sum of the lengths of the district perimeters is the lowest possible.

Lobbying

Corporations spend about $2.6 billion a year on lobbying expenses that they report. That’s 34 times the combined amount of all labor unions and public interest lobbying groups. The biggest companies have over 100 lobbyists – they are everywhere, all the time. Corporate lobbying influence has been growing and growing since the 1970s, and the domination of politics by business interests is now similar to what it was during the Gilded Age in the late 1800s. That’s a problem.

Those of you who stayed around last week to watch the documentary “13th” learned about ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council. It’s an organization of corporate interests that not only suggest general principles they’d like supported, but write the entire bill themselves and hand it to a legislator to introduce.

Perhaps investing more in congress to allow lawmakers to hire staff to do their own work instead of relying on lobbying groups would help.

Direct-to-Voter "Lobbying"

But, you know, it’s not just our legislators that are being constantly lobbied by the interests of greater corporate profit about all else. It’s us. As pharmaceutical companies discovered the advantages of direct-to-consumer advertising, so, too, have corporate interests discovered the advantages of direct-to-voter lobbying. And the corporations don’t even have to pay for it.

Even if we had 100% public financing of all elections, and eliminated all corporate lobbying, talk radio and Fox news would still be presenting distortions and factual errors that encourage people to vote against their own interests. Propagation of falsehood and distortion corrupts our democracy.

We've seen a rise since 1987 (when the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, allowing radio stations to air commentary without giving time for opposing views, paving the way for the rise of talk radio), and a further rise since 1996 (the year Fox news was founded) in messaging with a heavy corporate bias. I’m not saying the left is always thoroughly fact-checked and well-reasoned. The left has documentarians and comedians, while the right wing has talk radio and Fox TV. It’s kind of funny how that works. Liberal attempts to do talk radio and duplicate the angry snark of conservative talk show hosts have not done so well. And conservative attempts to make documentary films -- or tell a joke -- likewise generally flop. I’m not sure why that is. But whatever the medium, distortion and factual inaccuracy are not the exclusive province of the right. I’ve seen some fuzzy-reasoned and weakly evidenced documentaries on the left, even if I was sympathetic to the claim being advanced. And I've recognized unfair jokes from late-night comedians, even if I did laugh at them.

One thing about my experience of democracy in action at a Charlottesville church: there was no talk-radio-type bluster, and there were no jokes. There was no ridiculing – not the angry ridiculing of the incensed right, nor the giggling ridiculing of the aloof left. Maybe the left can’t do angry snark and the right can’t do funny snark, but we’re all doing a lot of snark these days. If democracy is, as John Dewey said, “a way of life of free and enriching communion” – if democracy is what I fully experienced on one glorious Sunday afternoon in Virginia almost 30 years ago – there’s no snark. There’s no ridiculing.

I admit that I have engaged in ridiculing. I’ve been snarky, and still am from time to time. Sometimes I go for the joke instead of the heart. I can tell you that in this next week I’m very probably going to spend some time streaming Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, and/or Samantha Bee, and I will take what balm I can for my political pain in smirking along with the comics, in laughter as respite for tears. We take the solace that’s available when real democracy is not.

I’m concerned that corporations have disproportionate power, and that their pursuit of profits, which they are legally and even ethically required to aggressively maximize because they have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders, is harming this country and this planet. But demonizing corporations is not the way forward. Demonizing the other party is not the way forward.

I have glimpsed what democracy truly looks like. It looks like a couple hundred of the people with whom I share my life gathered 30 years ago to hear and to listen and to disagree, to care passionately about the issues, to care for each other more – and to outvote me.

Except for very small towns, city politics cannot look like that, nor can state or national politics. But if we personally experience the awesome community-forming power of face-to-face democracy, we may be energized to seek better democratic process on the larger scales. We will want to allow more voices rather than just wealthy ones. We will want to cultivate the democratic "habits of the heart" that engender better listening, better appreciation of our mutual interdependence, warmer hospitality to 'otherness', more life-giving holding of tensions, and more capacity for creating community (see 2013 post, "Five Habits of the Heart"). We will want to make it easier for representatives to represent all their constituents rather than lobbyists, to publicly fund campaigns, and to create districts without regard to partisan interest. The first step to doing these things is to want them. Wanting them comes from loving democracy. Loving democracy comes from having chances to experience it -- perhaps the most significant experience a congregation can provide.

* * *
This is part 3 of 3 of "The Corruption of Our Democracy"
See also:
Part 1: I Love Democracy!
Part 2: Painful Divide

Painful Divide

The Corruption of Our Democracy, part 2

Fastforward 25 or so years and it’s the year 2010. I’ve become a minister, and I’m serving a congregation in Gainesville, Florida. I’m also the president of the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of Florida, representing Florida’s 44 congregations in lobbying for Unitarian Universalist values in the Florida legislature in Tallahassee. One of the members of the board of this legislative ministry is a woman from the Venice, Florida congregation named Kindra Muntz. Kindra is interested and engaged in all our legislative ministry issue – housing, reproductive rights – but she is most passionate about democratic process: voting rights, gerrymandering, campaign finance.

2010 you’ll recall is the year that the Citizens United decision was handed down – and that was a clear step backward. After I left Florida, I’d still see Kindra every June at General Assembly. If it was an even-numbered year, when we were selecting a new Congregational Study Action Issue, Kindra was at work lobbying the delegates to select repairing our democratic process. And then, in 2016, Kindra’s issue won. Also on the ballot were, “Ending gun violence,” “a national conversation on race,” and “climate change and environmental justice.” Edging these out was Kindra’s proposal, “the corruption of our democracy.”

The argument that, in the end I think proved decisive for the delegates was that we’ll never be able to make progress on any of the other issues if we don’t first have a fair and functioning democracy. Kindra kinda had a point. But we have a deep problem of which money in politics is only the symptom of our divisions and of the pain and despair we feel from those divisions.

Here’s another symptom. Americans have been surveyed about whether they would be displeased or upset if their child married someone outside their political party. In 1960, five percent of Americans said they’d mind if their child married someone of the other party. By 2010, 40 percent say they’d be upset. 50 percent of Republicans say they wouldn’t want their daughter or son to marry a Democrat, and 30 percent Democrats say that about marrying a Republican.

And I get that. In fact, I admit that I’m a part of that. I am not immune to the divides that split our nation, and those divides have pushed me to a wider opposition to one entire political party than my parents or their parents felt necessary most of their lives. If my daughter had come home her senior year in college and announced she was engaged to a guy who, she went on to tell us, was the president of her campus’ chapter of the College Republicans, yeah, I’d feel that. I'm sure I'd have learned to like the fellow, but at first there'd have been a twinge of feeling I'd failed as a parent. I’m sorry, but I think I would have had that twinge. And please know, those of you who are Republicans, that I love and respect you, and am committed to offering you every service I can as your minister. I am thankful every day that you let me have that role in your life, and right now what I have to offer is my confession. I’m confessing the limits and the blinders of my biases -- and that I’m hurting. This level of political divisiveness hurts. I weep for my country.

I also weep from knowing our history -- the chicanery and genocide with which Europeans stole this continent, the terrible abuse and tragedy of slavery, and Jim Crow, and red-lining. Yet through those tears, it was possible to believe that we as a country were learning, were bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice. With this additional wound of such deep division, every hopeful possibility is dimmed. There’s no possibility of real democracy – “a way of life of free and enriching communion” -- when we are this divided, when our alienation from one another has reached the level it has

Much of the UUA material on the corruption of our democracy focuses on the role of money in politics, and corporate personhood, and the idea that money is speech. The Citizens United decision lifted limits on how much corporations can give to campaigns.

The role of money in politics is, indeed, a problem. It’s true that money doesn’t directly buy elections. The losing candidate often outspends the winning candidate. Last November’s presidential election is a particularly vivid case in point: The winning candidate, our current president, spent about half of what losing candidate spent. The biggest spender doesn’t always win, but if you don’t spend at least a certain minimum, you’re never taken seriously and don’t stand a chance. And that minimum keeps rising and rising. The enormous cost of election has driven our lawmakers into continual fundraisers.

“Countless hours spent grubbing for money from affluent contributors changes candidates' priorities and sense of constituent needs. As they speak with potential donors, candidates hear repeatedly about resentment of progressive taxes and "wasteful" social spending. Special tax breaks for corporations and hedge fund managers start to sound reasonable.” (Benjamin Page, "How Money Corrupts American Politics)

The need for money tends to filter out centrist candidates, and candidates on the economic left. Candidates whose views are not broadly acceptable to the affluent can’t raise what is now the minimum to be taken seriously as a candidate.

Yes, that’s a corruption of democracy. Public funding of elections might help.

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This is part 2 of 3 of "The Corruption of Our Democracy"
See also
Part 1: I Love Democracy!
Part 3: Left Snark, Right Snark

I Love Democracy!

The Corruption of Our Democracy, part 1

I love democracy. I think my most joyous experiences as a Unitarian Universalist lay person came almost 30 years ago. I was a graduate student at the University of Virginia and a member of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church, Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville. I would’ve been about 29 or 30 years old, and had two small children in the church’s RE program.

There was some proposal on the floor at a congregational meeting. I don’t remember what it was. I just remember that I was for it. I took my turn and was recognized by the chair, and I spoke to my fellow Unitarian Universalists about why this proposal was a good idea, would strengthen our church and its values. Other members of the church spoke against it – people I had come to admire and respect, people I had gotten to know at the church’s social events, coffee hours, and committee meetings and retreats.

Amendments were proposed, and some of them, by majority vote, were incorporated, and others, failing to get a majority vote did not. I had to decide how to vote on each proposed amendment, and I carefully weighed what fellow UUs had to say. It was so much fun. It was great.

In the end we arrived at a final version of the proposal. It was the kind of proposal that required a 2/3rds vote to pass. And my side, arguing that it should pass, got 58 percent of the vote. My side lost. We got most of the votes, we got a majority. But we did not get the super-majority that was required.

I was so happy. I mean, I wasn’t happy that we lost. My cognitive judgment about what policy would have been better for the church was disappointed, but emotionally and spiritually, it wasn’t the outcome that mattered. It was the process, for in that process, I spoke and I was heard. I think a swayed a few people who were undecided. And my thoughts were taken seriously by the other side, seriously enough that they needed to rise to respond to the points I had raised.

We all had a vote and a voice, and we were listening to each other. Each of us, however we ultimately ended up voting, was listening to what everyone said. We weren’t just listening politely, or even listening respectfully, but we were listening – I’ll call it “listening from the place of risk.” I didn’t have that language available to me then – I didn’t have that concept – but I felt this thing that I would later call listening from the place of risk. What you place at risk when you listen from the place of risk is whatever opinion you had on the topic before the speaker began. You are ready to have your mind changed. Maybe it changes, and maybe it doesn’t, but you are ready to have it changed.

In that process, I belonged. I mattered. And I belonged and mattered because we all belonged and mattered. My personhood and agency were affirmed and that felt good, but what felt really good was being a part of a process of affirming the personhood and agency of everyone there.

I was lifted out of myself and made a part of something bigger – and maybe getting outvoted even might have helped in lifting me out of myself. I left my church that day elated, with an elation that has abided in my heart lo these many years.

You don’t get that if your leadership’s primary concern is making sure the meeting doesn’t go too long, or if people aren’t earnestly wrestling with the issue as manifested by proposing amendments in an attempt to more finely balance the competing values. I learned that day that debate can be a form of love – and that conflict is a way to see each other for who we really are – namely, distinct human beings with different viewpoints. We can’t cherish our differences if we don’t know our differences, and we can’t know our differences except superficially without the willingness to spend the time articulating our disagreement. When we do that from the place of risk, we not only see each other for who are -- it’s a process in which we become who we are. Embedded in community, our individuality is born.

So. I love democracy. It was John Dewey who said, “Democracy is the name of a way of life of free and enriching communion.”

A way of life –

Of free and enriching –

Communion.

Don't you, too, love that?

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This is part 1 of 3 of "The Corruption of Our Democracy"
See also
Part 2: Painful Divide
Part 3: Left Snark, Right Snark