The Raven Foundation

 

 

Do you have or know a child with an attention deficit disorder diagnosis? Then you are probably aware that the standard approach to diagnosing and treating A.D.D. is being seriously challenged by long term studies and neuroscientific discoveries. If you have been doing your best to cope with an A.D.D. child, this news may trigger a complicated range of emotions, everything from joy that there might be new hope for your child to anger, resentment, guilt or downright despair that by following the best medical advice of the last twenty years you may have harmed rather than helped your child. In spreading the news, it is not my intention to make anyone feel bad. That we have been misled is not our fault and fault-finding, while tempting in the short run to ease some personal pain, will not help your child. My hope for you and your child is that your undeniable willingness to do whatever it takes, including adjusting and adapting your own behavior, will enable you to listen with an open mind to the current discoveries and that you will find my parenting advice helpful. Here goes:

 

As a pre-school teacher in the late nineties, I had to deal with the standard approach to A.D.D. Over the years, a few of my students were in the process of being evaluated. Well-meaning parents, keen to give their children the best edge at early learning, eagerly embraced the diagnosis and drug treatment. But I wondered about the rush to diagnosis. Observing one parent at home with her young son, I couldn’t help but question the belief in genetic or born-with explanations. Believing that her child had trouble attending to the task at hand, I think it was playing with a set of blocks, she interrupted every few seconds with directions. It sounded like rapid gun fire to me.

 

See the big one? No not that one—the big one is blue. You know what blue is—you wanted to wear your blue shirt today. Look at your shirt. Look at your—don’t walk away. I want you to finish this. I know you can do it. Now sit down and see if you can find the big, blue one.

 

I felt my blood pressure rise as I listened to her relentless string of directives and I thought two things: no one could concentrate under those conditions, I don’t care how “normal” they were and her lack of confidence in her child broke my heart, and I am sure it wounded his. The big question that formed for me was this: Was this child truly born with an attention problem or was his parent’s behavior creating one in him? And if the latter, what good would a pill do?

 

The look-inside-the-child’s-brain-and-fix-it-with-a-pill approach to solving behavior problems is a symptom of a deeply held cultural conviction in the human being as a self-made, self-starting creature. The belief goes something like this: We are born with innate abilities and deficits, gifts and limits, that make us who we are. The job of concerned parents and educators is to correctly sort out what to encourage and what to fix and then to throw ourselves into the task with devotion as demonstrated by the barraging mother above. This conviction infects medicine, of course, as medicine is embedded in culture, not separate from it, and so medicine seeks to fix with its own brand of corrections. We have been operating under the self-made, self-starting picture of human beings for a good 500 years now, but this view is in the process of being overturned by theorists and experimental scientists and yielding exciting new ways to think about medicine, education and parenting.

 

In an article in the New York Times recently, L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, beautifully summarized the shift in thinking about A.D.D. that has occurred since the 1960s. From a theory of inborn dysfunction, the field has begun to recognize that “behavior and the brain are intertwined” and grow in a sort of feedback loop with one another. Behavior and environment influence and actually shape the physical brain. Prof. Sroufe says it this way: “One of the most profound findings in behavioral neuroscience in recent years has been the clear evidence that the developing brain is shaped by experience.” Or as René Girard, cultural theorist and founder of mimetic theory might say, we are not individuals at all but at every level and fiber of our being, we are inter-dividual, social creatures who when left alone as infants fail to thrive and even die. Just the opposite of independent self-starters, human beings develop under the influence of others, our community and culture. Are we born with particular bodies, unique genetics and predispositions? Of course we are, but that is not the limit of our becoming, in fact it is more like a cupboard of ingredients that can be shaped into different dishes by different environmental factors. It is also true that our particularities at birth will shape our response to the environments, but the critical discovery is the profound interaction of biology with environment that is the creative force in human development.

 

You may be surprised to know that this understanding of human development is not new, but rather has been part of the minority report operating below the surface. As a Montessori educator I learned that as early as 1903, Dr. Maria Montessori was teaching that the absolute worst thing one could do with children is to interrupt their play, or “work” as she called it. These interruptions interfere with a child’s normal attention pattern by imposing our will upon him. Today this is a common problem where busy lifestyles, the need to get to work, daycare, or other appointments forces the child into adapting to adult patterns of behavior.

 

Here is how Montessori described it in her medical textbook from the early 1900s:

 

Often what we call naughtiness on the part of the individual child is rebellion against our own mistakes in educating him. The coercive means which we adopt toward children are what   destroy their natural tranquility. A healthy child, in his moments of freedom, succeeds in escaping from the toys inflicted upon him by his parents, and in securing some object which arouses the investigating instinct of his mind; a worm, an insect, some pebbles, etc.; he is silent, tranquil and attentive. If the child is not well, or if his mother obliges him to remain seated in a chair, playing with a doll, he becomes restless, cries, or gives way to convulsive outbursts (“bad temper”). The mother believes that educating her child means forcing him to do what is pleasing to her, however far she may be from knowing what the child’s real needs are, and unfortunately we must make the same statement regarding the school-teachers! Then, in order to make him yield to coercion, she punishes the child when he rebels and rewards him when he is obedient. By this method we drive a child by force along paths that are not natural to him. (emphasis in the original)

 

I do admire her boldness – she is really unconcerned if she is hurting the feelings of well-meaning parents because her first and foremost concern is with the child. It is a wonderful example to imitate. Prof. Sroufe, also putting the child’s developmental needs first, pointed out that behavior problems in children have “many possible sources. Among them are family stresses.” He lists a few obvious stressors like domestic violence or chaotic living situations, but the one that interested me was this:

 

…especially, patterns of parental intrusiveness that involve stimulation for which the baby is not prepared. For example, a 6-month-old baby is playing, and the parent picks it up quickly from behind and plunges it in the bath. Or a 3-year-old is becoming frustrated solving a problem, and a parent taunts or ridicules.

 

The mother I described at the opening may not have thought of her directives as taunting, but I wonder if her child would agree. Someone who hovers over you and persistently focuses your attention on what you are doing wrong may indeed be described as engaging in ridicule. Now, if you have read this far, you are surely following in Montessori’s footsteps by doggedly putting your desire to help your child ahead of your instinctive need to avoid feeling hurt, guilty or whatever. Allow me to conclude with some easy to implement parenting tips to support a child’s natural development.

 

1.  
   1. When you see a child engaged in play or concentrating on seemingly trivial things like specks of dust or his own hand, think: “Einstein at work”. If you had to interrupt Einstein, you would do it in a spirit of humility and regret, wouldn’t you? That is the same attitude to take when you need to interrupt your child.
   2. Young children are notoriously bad at transitions, but easily coaxed into them with sufficient warning. Let’s use the example of transitioning from play time to dinner time. While the children are playing, slowly squat near them and in a quiet voice say, “Five minutes until it’s time to wash our hands for dinner.” Then walk away. Of course, the 5 minutes means nothing to them and be as short or long as you need it to be. But in a few minutes more, repeat your warning in a quiet voice, “3 minutes till dinner. It will be time to put your toys away and wash your hands.” Then give a one minute warning and finally, “It’s dinner time. Let’s put our toys away and wash up.”
   3. If your child balks at the moment of transition, don’t get into a power struggle. Just ask, “What did my words say?” Not “What did I say,” but precisely, “What did my words say?” Your child will think for a second and then repeat some version of “It’s time for dinner”. You will just shrug as if it is a shame for you, too, that we have to go to dinner, sharing in your child’s experience at that moment. Then off you go together, putting toys away and washing up as a team.

 

That’s it, three easy steps! It is hard to underestimate how vitally important this style of parenting can be to the formation of a healthy pattern of attention. As Dr. Montessori put it over one hundred years ago, “We cannot know the consequences of suffocating a spontaneous action at the time when the child is just beginning to be active: perhaps we suffocate life itself.” Too dramatic? Maybe, but maybe not. The beauty of it all is that to support life itself may be as easy as one, two, three.

 

 

 

 

Why did Southern states secede from the union? Between Lincoln’s election on Nov. 6, 1860 and his inauguration on March 4, 1861 seven states seceded, giving support to the theory that the South objected strongly to Lincoln and his Republican party. But in the 150 years since the war, the debate about the cause has hardly been settled. Added to Lincoln’s election, prime contenders are tariffs, states’ rights, and slavery. But one reason for secession is rarely on the list: security.

 

It seems odd to go to war – a risky endeavor involving death and destruction – to make yourself more secure, but it happens all the time. Security is why we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, of course. We wanted to make ourselves safe by attacking terrorists on foreign soil, taking the war to them, as the reasoning went ten years ago. But the Southern states, by seceding, tempted an invasion. The war would be fought on their own soil, not in some far away land. How could security have factored into their thinking?

 

I’ve been reading a special issue of the monthly magazine The Atlantic called The Civil War. If you are interested in the Civil War it is well worth purchasing. It is a collection of articles that were originally published in The Atlantic during the 1850s and 1860s, before, during and after the war. There is nothing like cutting through 150 years of commentary to let the people of the time speak for themselves. One of the articles is titled Charleston Under Arms and it was written by John William De Forest, a Connecticut-born journalist. It recounts his visit to Charleston in January 1861. You may remember that though South Carolina had seceded on December 20, federal forces still held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This is where the first shots of the Civil War would be fired on April 12. De Forest recounts conversations he had with residents of Charleston during this tense and uncertain time before the war began.

 

South Carolinians were committed to their right to secede. They felt they had done nothing wrong, unpatriotic or illegal. They were clearly upset about Lincoln’s election and distrusted the Republican platform, though De Forest could not understand why. The platform, he explained to one dubious citizen, was “not adverse to slavery in the States; it only objects to its entrance into the Territories; it is not an Abolition platform.” Yet this South Carolinian wasn’t buying it. He replied, “We believe that [the Republican platform] is an incomplete expression of the party creed, — that it suppresses more than it utters. The spirit which keeps the Republicans together is enmity to slavery, and that spirit will never be satisfied until the system is extinct.”

 

Of course, the South had a great deal to lose economically if slavery were abolished. I am no economist, but it is not hard to imagine the wealth that could be lost and how desperately some might resist such a reversal of their fortunes. Yet the Southern gentleman had a reputation of being indifferent to money. It is one of the ways that the North and South had diverged culturally. Mark Noll in The Civil War as a Theological Crisis explains that the North was experiencing “the expansion of consumer capitalism, in which unprecedented opportunities to create wealth were matched by large-scale alienation and considerable poverty in both urban and rural America.” The reputation of the Southern gentleman, on the other hand, was as an aristocratic man of honor who was above the base pursuit of money for its own sake. A rivalry emerged in which each was contemptuous and yet secretly admiring of the other, contributing to a climate of distrust and resentment that found its full expression in the argument over the future of slavery in the United States.

 

But it was not a defense of Southern wealth that lay at the bottom of one South Carolinian’s concern regarding the Republican determination to end slavery. I will quote directly from the article:

 

When I [De Forest] asked one gentleman what the South expected to gain by going out, he replied, “First safety. Our slaves have heard of Lincoln,—that he is a black man, or black Republican, or black something, —that he is to become ruler of this country the fourth of March, —that he is a friend of theirs, and will free them. We must establish our independence in   order to make them believe that they are beyond his help”…

 

My impression is, that a prevalent, though not a universal fear, existed lest the negroes should rise in partial insurrections on or about the fourth of March.

 

Above all this man expressed a fear of a violent slave revolt that would threaten the safety and security of his community. First safety. His fear was not unfounded. Slave revolts had taken place in which whites and blacks alike were killed. You will remember from your American History classes the names of John Brown and Nat Turner. These revolts caused fear and concern in the South. What we find in this quotation is that during the brief time between Lincoln’s election and the beginning of war, the threat of slave insurrections felt more real and imminent than any threat that might come from an invading Union army. Blinded by fear, the South would risk war to defend an evil institution.

 

What can we learn from this glimpse into Southern fears? Too often we view history a bit smugly, as if we have the perfect vantage point to understand motives, discern causes, and judge the right from the wrong, the wicked from the good. Used this way, history is not about the truth of another time or place, but is a part of the story we are telling about our own goodness. To avoid this pitfall, rather than sit in judgment of Southern fears, we might learn from them instead by asking a difficult question: Is it possible that our own fears are blinding us, too, preventing us from seeing some uncomfortable truth about ourselves?

 

Even more to the point, though slavery is long abolished, racism has been harder to eradicate. Are there ways in which we are as blind as South Carolinian slave holders to the continued suffering of the black community? Might a contemporary fear of loss of safety have a hold on us? I ask only because of the continuing presence of segregation in our schools and communities; I ask because according to Michelle Alexander, law professor at Ohio State and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began”; I ask because of lingering issues of voting rights discriminations and the undertones and sometimes overtones of racism in some attempts to delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency.

 

Look, my point is not to make people feel bad. I know that for white America to admit it still harbors racist fears and delusions of racial supremacy is a really uncomfortable place to go. But sometimes allowing ourselves to feel bad is the only way to be truly good. Instead of running from our fear and pretending everything is okay, feeling bad opens the door for change. The Civil War ended almost 150 years ago but the battle for racial equality is far from over. I hope you won’t be afraid to learn more about the fears and struggles of the past. Perhaps you can join the Raven Foundation as we look at the struggles for integration in the 1940s when baseball led the way forward in the Lookingglass production of “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting.” We are also offering an opportunity to explore new research into the theological arguments for and against slavery that were taking place before the Civil War, arguments that have left powerful handprints on our public life today. Raven is partnering with the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College to bring you leading Civil War scholars on March 16-17 for this historical and relevant conversation. Don’t miss these great opportunities to look together at our shared history – it might even feel good!

 

 

 

I have gotten a reputation in my family as a re-gifter. I accidently gave some monogrammed hand towels back to my daughter and a snowman appetizer dish to my daughter-in-law in two memorable senior moments. Luckily, they both laughed heartily at my mistake and thought I was adorable rather than tragically stupid. Doesn’t everyone know you are not supposed to re-gift to the giver but to someone else? I tried to soften my mistake by protesting that this didn’t mean I didn’t want or like their gifts – I liked their gifts so much, in fact, that I thought they would make great gifts for them! They weren’t convinced but at least I tried.

 

I mention this because I want to talk a little bit about the things we want and what that says about who we are. It’s the perfect time of year for it. We just got through December when everyone is asking each other, “What do you want for Christmas?” and we are in the middle of January when we are all asking ourselves, “What self-improvement resolution should I make – and break – this year?” What we want and who we want to be are as closely tied to one another as December is to January. Let’s take a quick look at how.

 

Most of the year we happily live with the delusion that our desires arise spontaneously from within our deepest selves. But in December that delusion is harder to maintain because advertisers are in an all-out, full court press operating on the opposite premise: that our desires can be influenced and manipulated from the outside. Think about your Christmas wish list for a minute – how did you come to want what you wanted? Did you see an advertisement that got you thinking about jewelry or a new coat? Did a celebrity interview entice you to see a movie or buy a book over the holidays? Maybe you saw someone using a new phone or overheard a conversation about a trendy restaurant for New Year’s Eve and you found yourself texting on your new device from the restaurant bar.

 

I bet you can connect each item on your list to the source of your desire, a source that lies somewhere outside of you. Even things that seem to be deeply personal don’t originate inside us. For example, this year what I wanted most was not a thing at all, but to feel happy during the holidays. Sometimes the season goes by so quickly and I am so stressed out that I don’t enjoy the parties and the family time very much. Clearly, sometimes I don’t even remember who gave me what gift! But I worked on it this year and I’m happy to say I got my wish. But where did that wish come from? I wish I could say that I was smart enough to know that the most important gifts aren’t things you can buy in a store, but not so. The truth is that I learned this from some great teachers over the years – Ebenezer Scrooge for one, Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life and so many other holiday movies for another, and my spiritual disciplines of yoga and daily prayer are great teachers, too. All those influences somehow combined together so that this year I wanted to be more like Jimmy Stewart than the gal with the new diamond necklace in the Kay Jewelry commercials.

 

You see, advertisers have got one thing very right – our desires are suggested to us from the outside. The tricky part is that when they nestle inside it feels as if they have always been there. But that’s just a convenient delusion that preserves our sense of independence and soothes our easily bruised egos. It’s really much healthier to let go of all that ego gratification and accept the truth that all our desires originate outside of us. Having unattached desires is what allows human beings to learn and grow and be the most innovative of all species. Other animals have instincts, but we have free-floating, unattached desires – yeah for us!

 

The trick of life is to be really smart about who and what we let our desires get attached to. The big mistake we often make at Christmastime is that we let advertisers and others we think are smarter, prettier or sexier than we are direct our desires for us. The important thing to remember is that our desires don’t take a direct path to objects – our desire is always deflected toward an object by someone we want to be like. That’s how the advertisers do it – they show us smart, pretty, sexy people with the objects they want us to buy. It’s genius, really. But allowing advertisers to dictate our desires is not genius. They are the worst kind of models because they don’t want what’s best for us, they want what’s best for them, which is for us to open our wallets and fork over the cash or swipe the plastic, as the case may be.

 

Fortunately for our souls, January follows right on the heels of this month of marketing mania. Making New Year’s resolutions forces us to take a hard look at who exactly we want to be like: the skinny girl, the ripped guy, the powerful boss, the smart professor, the sexy friend, the popular celebrity, whoever! These are our models of desire. Before you make any resolutions, you might want to ask yourself if you are happy with your models. Can you trust them? Are they truly unselfish models, wanting for you only what is best for you? If not, you might want to shop around for different models. They may be fictional, historical or spiritual; you may find them in books or plays, at church or work or close to home. The best models are the ones who truly love you or inspire you to live a joyful, fulfilled and peaceful life. At least that bit of wisdom is the gift my models have given me, and I guess this blog is my attempt to share that gift with you. No senior moment this time, no accidental re-gifting. Learning the truth about desire and how to choose models is a gift worth re-gifting – pass it on!

 

Is there any rational reason to believe in miracles? The question is not about belief in miracles per se, but the reason behind belief. Lots of times the question of miracles involves the search for a rational explanation. If you find one, then bingo, you debunk the miracle and score another triumph for reason. Recently I experienced a miracle trifecta in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral: mass was being said at the central altar; to the left was a really impressive nearly life-size crèche complete with adoring camel; and to the right was a chapel dedicated to the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe to a Mexican peasant in 1531. Transubstantiation, incarnation and visitation – easily debunked miracles, right? Yet there I was all dewy-eyed and verklempt receiving communion, lighting a candle at the crèche, and joining the crowd adoring Our Lady of Guadalupe because it just happened to be her feast day (coincidence or miracle?!). Had I taken leave of my senses and given in to some emotional, romantic experience of the presence of God or had my reason come along for the ride?

 

The question of rational reasons to believe in miracles might seem to be off the table from the start as a contradiction in terms. Yet I do think that there is a very rational reason to believe in miracles, a reason rooted in the very mundane reality of this world. At Christmas, angels (another easily debunked miracle!) announced that the mundane reality of the world was about to change. They proclaimed that a Messiah had entered the world as a little child to bring peace on earth. Really, now?? That would be a reality shifter of volcanic magnitude! The reality of this world is definitely one of not-peace and the idea that it could be transformed by a child, well, that would be a miracle! I couldn’t agree more! What I’d like to propose is that the reality of not-peace is sustained by a powerful, totalizing logic which would take a miracle to disprove.

 

Here goes: the desire for peace on earth is nearly universal, yet peace has been an elusive dream. Why is that? There always seems to be one more obstacle to peace, one more evil villain who must be defeated before peace can reign on earth. The job of good people is to be vigilant against evil and, if possible, to learn to identify evil before it can do harm to innocent people. This is the current quest of our own Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, Department of Defense and so on. The logic of good versus evil requires them to identify evil and destroy it by any means possible, all in the service of goodness and peace.    

 

This logic is familiar to us and it permits the use of violence by good people in the name of peace. I have written about this many times before, so it will not be surprising when I point out that everyone who employs violence is doing so in the name of some ultimate good or another. Goodness is defined using me and my aims as the standard, of course, and evil is always located somewhere outside of me and my community. If goodness is always me-orientated, then anyone who opposes me, my goals or desires is by definition evil. Do you see how totalizing this is and how completely logical? If you begin with the premise that goodness equals me and evil is that which opposes me, then every “me” on the planet can self-identify as good and justify the destruction (figuratively or literally) of all the evil others out there who get in my way. We see it in domestic politics, international relations, and our own personal relationships when others seem to be willfully intent on obstructing our desires. They can be none other than evil by virtue of their opposition to the good – moi! This logic prevents us from seeing the truth that our enemies are using the same logic to define themselves as good and we as evil. All parties to a conflict use this logic to justify their use of violence so no one employing violence is self-identifying as evil. It is the good people, at least in their own opinion, who are doing all the bad things. Paradoxically yet logically, we find ourselves very busy creating a world of not-peace in the name of peace while never doubting our own goodness! A real predicament, isn’t it?

 

So what is the way out of this logical system? We could try to reason our way out, but ironically we have reasoned our way into it so successfully that any challenge to the system fits neatly into it: challenge my goodness or use violence against me and I have proof of your wickedness. Yet if I challenge your goodness or use violence against you, magically this is evidence of my commitment to the good. So anything that could crack open the logic at play here can’t come from within the system itself. A successful challenge would have to come from outside the system and appear other worldly, outside of our everyday experience – in other words, a miracle. A miracle that allows us to see ourselves in the face of our enemies and our enemies as children of God. The miracle can come to us in and through our mundane experiences: a birth, a meal, a message of love. When it comes, the logic of good and evil and of violence in the name of peace is revealed for a lie and peace becomes possible.

 

I believe in miracles because their existence challenges our reliance on logic and reason, which is an absolutely good thing given how much trouble logic can get us into. But miracles have a logic of their own, the logic of the possible impossible. In fact, the idea of a miracle might actually have some support from mathematics, the language of science. In the early twentieth century, the mathematician Kurt Godel discovered what he called the theorem of incompleteness which is the proof of a paradox, that there are true but unprovable statements. True but unprovable: maybe that’s what miracles are. You see, it was very reasonable for me to be verklempt at St. Pat’s and for all of us to be a bit dewy-eyed at the sight of the babe in the manger. Miracles make sense! Peace is possible! Merry Christmas!

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This video is for parents looking for a positive way to connect Santa Claus to the Christmas story. If your child is young enough to believe in Santa Claus this video will help you handle Santa's naughty or nice list and your child's Christmas present wish list. Santa can be a wonderful example of what the love and joy of Christmas is all about.

 

A.C. Grayling (from left), Matthew Chapman, Rabbi David Wolpe and Dinesh D'Souza faced off on the notion "The World Would Be Better Off Without Religion."

 

A rabbi, a descendant of Charles Darwin, a philosopher and a scholar recently teamed up at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts to debate this motion: “The world would be better off without religion.” The live studio audience was polled before and after the debate and a winner was declared. Before I tell you the numbers, what do you think? Would the world be better off without religion?

 

Even more relevant – what do you think of the question? I had a hard time taking it seriously, especially after I started listening to the debate. I had hoped that before they jumped into arguing for or against the motion they would define what they meant by “religion”. They did not. For the sake of clarity, I hoped they also might have defined what “better off” meant since it requires a comparison to an imaginary world in which religion doesn’t or never did exist. They did not do that either.  Those arguing for the motion said the things you would expect – we’d be better off without religion because it is the cause of war, provides justification for violence, and is indicative of faulty reasoning. People who believe in God are irrational, hypocritical and violent. Those arguing against the motion said that more wars and genocides had been committed in the name of atheism than God, that religion is an organized system that encourages people to be better and to work for a better world.  They made the counteraccusation that those who said we’d be better off without religion were the ones guilty of faulty reasoning. Nothing either side said changed my opinion that the motion itself was flawed.

 

What the two opposing teams had in common was more telling than their so-called differences. For example, they both clearly got that there was a strong connection between religion and violence. One side thought religion made the world more violent and the other side thought less, but “less violent” was clearly what they meant by “better off”. What both sides failed to see, however, was that it isn’t the presence of religion in the world that’s the problem or the solution, but rather how successful religion is at any time or in any place at doing its job. In other words, the problem is not religion but violence itself. The job of religion is to respond to the problem of violence. Anyone familiar with anthropology knows that wherever human culture is found so is religion. The one does not exist without the other. A key idea of mimetic theory, which is the study of the connection between religion and violence, is that religion solved the problem of human violence, thus making human culture possible. Religion can be thought of as the mechanism that made the proto-human world less violent, putting the side arguing against the motion on the right side of the issue.

 

But to say that religion makes the world less violent misses a crucial point: If it was religion that controlled violence in the proto-human world, how did it do it? Ancient or archaic religion was a religion of sacrifice and it used violence to control violence. It involved rituals, prohibitions, myth and sacrifice: violence was controlled through sacrificial means, temple rituals in which humans and animals were killed often after ritual reenactments of wars or wild times in which all prohibitions were relaxed, kind of like Mardi Gras. The community discharged all its angers, resentments, little built up hurts and grudges in a ritual frenzy ending in the shedding of blood. Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto captured the pre-sacrificial frenzy and the calming effect of the sacrifice really well. A little bit of violence in a controlled (ritual) setting kept the violence outside of the community and life could flourish.

 

We no longer have ritual sacrifice per se, but archaic religion survives in a more subtle form. Anywhere violence is justified as a way to bring peace by invoking God’s name – or in the name of any supreme good like ethnic, racial, tribal or national identity – you have archaic or sacrificial religion. Today’s revealed religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism are the biggies) are still engaged with the problem of violence just as they were when they were revealed. The presence of violent passages in the sacred texts of these religions does not mean that they are advocating violence, but that solving the problem of violence is their main function.  To think that those texts are the cause of violence would be like concluding that hospitals cause people to become sick and die. Violence is in the texts for the same reason sick people are in hospitals: everyone is looking for a cure. Revealed religions, though, offer a different cure than archaic religions. Rather than using violence to control violence, they aim at building peaceful communities through practices of love, mercy and forgiveness. This is the non-sacrificial solution but not all their adherents get the message. Religious and non-religious people too easily revert to ancient sacrificial practices: we find all kinds of excuses for using violence, including invoking God’s name, despite the efforts of revealed religions. When Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or any religious group claims God to be on their side, they are caught up in an old and dying paradigm. The long trajectory of human history is a religious journey away from the use of sacrificial violence toward a new way of achieving peace by peaceful means.

 

Here are the results of the audience survey: Before the debate 52 percent of the live audience thought the world would be better off without religion and 26 percent disagreed, with 22 percent undecided. Afterward, those in favor of a world without religion jumped to 59 percent and those against the idea rose to 31 percent — making the side arguing for a world without religion the winners of the debate. Ten percent of the audience remained undecided, maybe because they sensed the debate had been about the wrong question. The better motion would have been: The world would be better off without the justification of violence by anyone for any reason. Revealed religions are in favor of that motion. Which side are you on?

The Christmas season is upon us and so is that classic parenting problem: the temper tantrum in the toy aisle of Walmart.  You know the scene: you are rushing to buy gifts for your nieces and nephews and your child decides he has to have some toy or other right now or he will die. Of course you say “no” – you are a smart parent who knows well enough that children aren’t the best judges of what they need, but your child is not going to take “no” for an answer. You explain, distract, offer him his favorite stuffed animal, all to no avail. Your child will not be soothed and you feel the eyes of judgment focused mercilessly on you as other parents with their well-behaved children coldly steer around you. To end the humiliation, you give in and buy the toy. We all know what happens next, don’t we? Maybe the next day, or maybe when you get home, maybe as soon as your darling is buckled into his car seat, the must-have-or-I-will-die toy loses its fascination and you begin to metaphorically kick yourself for being a failure as a parent.

 

Okay, not a pretty picture, but all parents have been there and there’s no point in beating ourselves up about it. Stuff happens. So let’s take a more constructive look at this scene and ask the big question: What is going on with this child? Why all the drama for the toy? If we understand desire as springing from within us then the toy actually does represent something that he truly, desperately, inconsolably wants. Despite being aware that advertisements geared toward children have a strong influence on their desires, that kids want what their friends and older siblings have, we still default to a deeper belief that a child’s desires arise from within his little self. But if that picture of desire is true, how do we explain how quickly the desire fades away? We might say that it faded as quickly as it arose, but that still begs the question of where it came from in the first place. If the desire is an intrinsic part of the child’s self, then it should have a bit more staying power, shouldn’t it?

 

A closer look at the temper tantrum reveals that what is on display is not passion for the toy – it is a display of passion itself. What your child is demonstrating is the power of his desiring muscles. They are intensely, immensely strong in children and when they get attached to an object, that object is elevated to a position of incredible value by the power of the desire itself. Unfortunately for you, your child’s desire just happened to latch on to this random object in the toy aisle, but let’s be clear: the object doesn’t matter. Remember the old Clinton presidential campaign slogan “It’s the economy, stupid”? That was a great slogan to keep the campaign from getting distracted by things that didn’t matter. Well, in our scenario the toy is the distraction and understanding desire is the key to a successful (parenting) campaign.

 

So here’s what I suggest: First, keep your sense of humor. The child flailing around in the toy aisle with sobs that rival Rachel weeping for her children is a total hoot! No one should fall for the drama, and believe me when I tell you, your child doesn’t believe it either. That is unless you give in. If you do, you send the message that he was right, the toy WAS necessary for life because if it wasn’t you wouldn’t have given in, right? You are the adult and are supposed to know better. So what do you think it does to his trust in you when his desire fizzles? A few incidents don’t cause much harm, but if you repeat a pattern over time of reinforcing the child’s sense that the object matters, then he will learn to seek fulfillment through possession of objects. And learn it he will because desire itself doesn’t learn. No amount of fizzled fascination will ever teach desire that the object wasn’t all that important. Desire just desires endlessly. Learning what to do with our desire, when to trust it and when to discipline it; when to follow its lead and when to deny its provocations – that’s what growing up is all about and that’s what parents are supposed to teach their children.

 

So the next time this happens to you – and it will – have a good laugh right there in Walmart. Treat that temper tantrum like the really funny game of dress up that it is. Because the truth is your child is trying on a desire that doesn’t fit very well and makes him look a little ridiculous, so be sure you get the joke. That will release a lot of tension and may be enough to diffuse the tantrum. If your little imp has whipped himself up into such a frenzy that he doesn’t notice your shift in attitude, well, you may have to put off your Walmart shopping spree and exit the store for now. Be consoled that you will be leaving with a healthier parent-child bond, and that’s something even Walmart doesn’t stock on its shelves.

Many years ago I had a friend who wanted to help me when my second child had just been born. I did have my hands full with two children under two, but I kept telling her, “Thanks, but no thanks.  I don’t need any help.” I honestly thought I was doing her a favor by not making any demands on her. Finally, in exasperation, she said, “Please let me help you. It would be doing me a favor!” I was stunned. I hadn’t realized how my refusal to accept her help had left her feeling helpless and inadequate.

 

Why is it so difficult for us to accept help from others? Maybe it’s because we don’t like admitting to our inadequacies. So we end up using “thank you” for actions that are routine and don’t necessarily fill us with waves of gratitude. For example, when the busboy refills your water glass, isn’t that his job? Yet I know that I find myself saying thank you to him. What is going on there? Think about it – not saying “thank you” makes a silent but effective statement of inequality, such as “Your job is to serve me and my job is to accept that service.” By not thanking the busboy, I affirm my superior position over him. When I do say the words of thanks, I am sending a different message altogether – “Your service is generous and unexpected; we are not on different social levels, but social equals who serve each other out of choice, not obligation.” Of course, when we leave a tip for the waiter that we expect is shared with the busboy, we return the busboy’s gift with one of equal value (at least from our perspective!). The tip, construed as an option rather than an obligation, denies the reality that the tip is indeed payment for services rendered, and not a gift. The unacknowledged result of the “thank you” to the busboy is that inequality is denied and obligation masquerades as gift.

 

I find this interesting for two reasons. The first is how it reveals the American obsession with equality. Even when inequality is built into the relationship, we conceal or deny it beneath a veneer of social niceties. The other reason is how it messes with a genuine experience of gratitude. By perpetrating the double illusion that (1) inequality is absent from a relationship of obvious inequality, and (2) that an obligation is a gift, we may begin to lose sight of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of genuine generosity. Equality is indeed a wonderful thing, but inequality has its virtues as well. The experience of gratitude contains within it an assumption of inequality. In other words, gratitude is a response to being given something undeserved and generous by someone who, by their gift, disrupts the equilibrium of your relationship. In the flood of gratitude, words often fail us. We might say, “thank you isn’t enough” or “how can I ever repay you?” The point of a truly generous gift is that there is no expectation of repayment, no possibility of being able to return in kind something of equal value, like a tip for a filled water glass. No “thank you” can effectively conceal just how unequal your relationship has become or just how marvelous that feels.

 

Getting comfortable with feeling inferior, inadequate or just plain needy may make it possible to recognize authentic gifts from family, friends and strangers and thus to experience the joy of gratitude. It may help our relationship with God as well – or the Divine or Spirit – however you conceive of that which is bigger than we are. You see, if we deny that there is something bigger than we are with which we can never achieve equality, the possibility for Divine generosity is reasoned away. We end up treating God like a busboy, offering the Divine a perfunctory “thank you” for services rendered, feigning equality where none is possible and shutting down the possibility of true gift. What I’m suggesting is that sometimes a “thank you”, nice as it is, can function more like a “thanks, but no thanks” allowing us to preempt gifts with an illusion of self-sufficiency, which is the ultimate position of superiority.

 

It is still hard for me to this day, almost 30 years after my children were born, to admit when I need help. When I can do it, when I allow someone else to see my need and respond to it with a gift for which no “thank you” will ever be enough, my feeling of inadequacy melts into waves of gratitude and joy. I know it’s counter-intuitive – Americans are supposed to be all about equality and self-sufficiency. But if you try admitting your inadequacy, gift and gratitude just might take you by surprise.

Things for the 99% to think about while Occupying Wall Street (or wherever):

The top 1% should pay their fair share.

When politicians try to divide the rich against the poor, rich and poor alike should refuse to take the bait. Here are some basic facts to consider: The wealthiest 1% pay an average tax rate of 30% and they account for 38% of all income taxes. The top 50% of tax payers pay practically all of the nation’s taxes (97.30%) and 40-45% of American income earners pay zero taxes. Now, I won’t deny the tax code we have in place is a bit of a convoluted mess or that it could use some serious reform, but overall it seems fair to me and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking that 1% of the people in this country are the cause and cure of 100% of our problems. And let’s face it, isn’t all this talk about fairness a little transparent? I mean, really, the truth is we are only annoyed with the 1% because we aren’t one of them! If we were rich and powerful, too, we wouldn’t be mad at ourselves, would we? So let’s be smarter than the politicians give us credit for and stop denying the love part of our love/hate relationship with the 1%. That would be fair.

We can balance the budget by cutting spending.

According to the Congressional Research Service, which prepared a report for members of congress on the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terror, we have spent a total of $1.283 trillion since 9/11. While we are all arguing about who should pay more taxes, what spending to cut or which investments are worth making, we might just check in with the Pentagon and ask to see their balance sheets. The Congressional Budget Office consistently complains that they cannot get a clear reckoning of where all that trillion plus has been spent. Seriously?! I think all this 1% talk is a smoke screen to keep us from looking at the budget that really needs to be reformed.

Wall Street got us in this mess and they need to be held accountable.

We love to blame Wall Street for the mortgage crisis and housing downturn, but a closer look reveals our shared responsibility. We all participated in the boon years when housing prices soared and home equity loans allowed us to pay for our consumer lifestyles. As a nation we spent to excess, ran up credit card bills, and never wondered if we were going a bit overboard. Wealthy Wall Street traders and the average American homeowner became a lot alike as we all borrowed against the value of our portfolios only to see values dive, leaving us with nothing but debt. The Wall Street derivative traders believed in the value of their securities as surely as we believed in the value of our houses. Both turned out to be illusions.

My point is…

Look, I’m not denying that lots of people are in deep financial doodoo or that there are things that need fixing on Wall Street and on Main Street. Sure some guilty people made out scot free and innocent people are suffering, but is it really productive to waste all that energy being angry about it? I’m afraid that the Occupying Wall Street movement, by playing the cynical game that politicians like to play of dividing us against ourselves, is going to get us nowhere. The 99% need to stop blaming the 1% for all their problems and begin to realize that we need each other, all 100% of us, to weather the storm we are in. We even need the politicians – I know, we want to jettison the whole lot, but if we stopped falling for their simplistic, self-serving cr@#, they’d have to stop dishing it out. David Brooks said it: “It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behavior from top to bottom. Let’s occupy ourselves.”

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I reflect on the 9/11 anniversary events I attended in the Chicago area: the Ground Zero 360 exhibit at the Field Museum and a conversation with community leaders at the WBEZ studio sponsored by the Project on Civic Reflection. When asked how we could recapture the unity of those early days after 9/11, one women I met at the Field said, "Turn to God". That got me thinking.